1 - is it possible to set the GOP from 1 to 13 for only the 24L so I can still use my Driftwood Hack for the 24H? That would mean 24L would be only for time lapse and 24H would be for standard 24p filming.

balazer

You can shoot video in any mode and use software post-processing to apply any speed-up that you want. I shoot with a wide shutter angle and use frame blending to make the motion look smooth. This simulates severe undercranking with a 360-degree shutter.

This particular example was shot on a hacked GH2 in AVCHD 1080p 24-fps mode with the shutter speed set to 1/2 s. That makes the recorded video have 13 frames for each picture taken, for an effective frame rate of 23.976/13, or about 1.84 fps. You can set the GOP length to 13 frames, which will give you one I-frame for each picture taken, and then use just the I-frames in decoding. That increases compression efficiency and gives you longer recording times. The shutter angle here is 332 degrees, or 92%, which isn't bad, but ideally you want to get closer to 360 degrees so that you don't have discontinuities in the motion trails. If I did this again, I would have shot 8-fps in 300% variable mode with a 1/8 s shutter speed. Using a lower frame rate of course means there is less video data that needs to be processed.

Here's the video data flow:
camera MTS -> Haali Media Splitter -> ffdshow tryouts decoder -> Avisynth -> makeAVIS -> Sony Vegas

Here's my Avisynth script for doing 65x speed-up: 16.25x from undercranking and 4x from frame blending:
DirectshowSource("input.MTS")
SelectEvery(13)
c1=selectevery(last, 4, 0)
c2=selectevery(last, 4, 1)
c3=selectevery(last, 4, 2)
c4=selectevery(last, 4, 3)
blend1 = Overlay(c1, c2, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)
blend2 = overlay(c3, c4, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)
Overlay(blend1, blend2, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)
AssumeFPS("ntsc_video")

Time lapse photography has practical applications. Say you are filming a car driving by at 10 miles per hour, but you want to make it look like it's going 60 miles per hour. If your target format is 24 fps with a 180-degree shutter, you can shoot 24-fps with a 1/25 s shutter, and then blend the first three frames of every six into one output frame. Or you can shoot 8-fps in 300% variable mode with a 1/8 s shutter, and drop every other frame. If the car is going straight down a road with no bumps or curves, the effect will be totally convincing. :)

yaboo

Does this work on the gf2/3

balazer

I suggest Aquamotion v1 because I know it works to change the GOP length to 13 and shoot 24p with a 1/2 s shutter. I haven't tested that with Aquamotion v2. Also, I believe v1 is more reliable than v2. The quality is about the same.

mangomonster

Oh, I realized I've been using Aquamotion V2 @ 100mbits... are you saying Aquamotion V1 is better as an overall high quality video codec than V2? Or better just for timelapse @ 300%?

balazer

@mangomonster, Spanmybitchup is 66 Mbps intra. It probably won't be great quality. I suggest using Aquamotion v1 with VMM 300% mode, or Aquamotion v1 with the GOP length changed to 13 and a 1/2 s shutter, or using duartix's TimeBuster settings.

duartix

Beware of taking photos to build timelapses. You can wear the camera shutter in a very short time! Do a quick calculation of the (shutter actuations/shutter life expectancy) before you go on that route. Consider using the electronic shutter or video mode instead.

mangomonster

Thanks guys... a bit overwhelming. I think I have Spanmybitchup v1 installed. It's 100mbit I think. So is that a GOP1 setting? I think I might just record using that at 300% speed. I also lowered the bit rate for 24L to around 40mbit to give me some peace of mind incase I get write errors.

There's just so much to know. I need to dedicate a day to just messing with this all. On the other spectrum is just using an intervalometer and shooting in RAW... which is tempting, but I also know very little about how to do it well.

tida

Please find an update of above described macro at:

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2232/different-times-at-one-location-extended-dynamic-range-solution-for-1080p-videos#Item_1

Also a method for the generation of HDR Exposure Fusion is included...

tida

I did create a macro for AvsPmod for a simple timelapse conversion procedure. The attatched timelapse.py file has to be installed into the 'macros' folder (or sub folders) of AvsPmod. If you start AvsPmod new then you can click in the macros menue (or sub menue) just on 'TimeLapse'. Choose in the file open dialog box the mts file from which you would like to obtain a timelapse. Enter in the second dialog box like it is shown in below image the three requested parameters. By means of subsequent third FileSave dialog box you can save the avs-file of the AviSynth-script... done.

Now you can transfer this script by MeGUI, Virtualdub etc. to the new mp4/avi etc. file. That's the simples workflow I have found to create the required script and archive what you have done. Maybe it could be a good alternative to the workflow of @GH13Timelapser.

Instead of Overlay method described by @balazer I used a TemporalSoftener method. That should give similar results, might be little bit slower but gives you the flexibility to speed up by 2x,3x,4x,5x etc. times. The Overlay method is good to speed up in the order of 2x,4x,8x times but it's hard to have this implemented all together in one routine.

I think the TemporalSoftener method has the potential to be used for a gradual speed up/slow down timelapse routine in the future.

Please give me some feedback about adjustments or other useful ideas....

duartix

When I need lossless I use the Lagarith codec: http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html It's very fast and manages some noticeable reduction over uncompressed.

tida

@duartix I used only one camera. You record at normal conditions (1/25s, 1/50s, 1/60s or 1/100s, 1/125s for slowmo at high ISO) before or after the timelapse record (1/2s at low ISO) takes place.

For a slowmo part you could transfer the 50i/60i file to 50p/60p by AviSynth deinterlace plugin Yadif and go back to 24p for the final fusion.

Important is just not to move the camera and take care about same aperture and focusing conditions. You will need of course an ND Fader and adjust it as well to get the right exposure either for the shadows or clouds.

As soon I'll get time enougth I will post some Avisynth scripts. At the moment I think the macro function in AvsPmod would help for a very quick and simple workflow as you can generate and save different scripts at the same time. Final generation of mp4-files could carried out in MeGui where generation can take place for more then one file automatically. Otherwise, lossless AVI-files by Virtualdub or again AvsPmod for max quality.

Would be great if somebody has other ideas for a very effective workflow....

duartix

@mangomonster & Timelapsers:

Here's a toy for you to play: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2135/gh2-2fps-avchd-timebuster-patch-the-day-is-not-over/p1

It will give you ~6h at top notch quality on 16GB.

Don't forget to give feedback.

@tida : Did you use 2 cameras for that HDR fusion?

balazer

@mangomonster,

No, you cannot have separate GOP length settings for 24H and 24L. If you need the absolute longest recording times, you'll need GOP13 and 1/2 s shutter. If you can make do with somewhat shorter recording times, I'd suggest loading a GOP1 patch setting like Aquamotion v1 and shooting in VMM300% mode. That would leave you with a standard 24p mode when not doing time lapses. Another option would be to use Cake. With the shutter at 1/2 s, you'll have recording times about 4 times as long as with a normal shutter speed.

I don't know anything about Final Cut Pro. Most video editing software has some ability to speed up footage, but it might be limited to 4x or something like that, and it might not give you control over how frames are blended. If you shoot in VMM300% mode, you'll be starting with a 300% speed-up, which you can speed up further in your video editing software.

tida

@mangomonster if you would like to reserve 24p for normal shooting you could also take your timelapse in 60i/50i mode and deinterlace them to 30p/25p (or 60p/50p that would be more useful for slow motion at 1/2 or 1/2.5 speed) by Avisynth methods like Yadif...

tida

"3 Your work flow is for Sony Vegas on a PC. Is there any work flow for Final Cut Pro that you can recommend? It looks like you're doing something much more complicated than just throwing the video on a timeline and speeding it up"

@mangomonster you don't need vegas to make this nice timelapses. Most was based on freeware. That are AviSynth scripts which run in combination with Virtualdub, AvsMod, MeGui etc....

Impotant is that it should be blended near 360 degree (this time not 180) rule. Then moving subjects will just flow away naturally...

You could also start with 24p at 1/25s and speed it up by blending as you want like 2 times, 4 times as @balazer decribed, 8 times, 16 times etc...

======== Script for just doubling the rate would look like this:

DirectShowSource("C:\dir1\dir2\file.mts")

c1=selectevery(last, 2, 0)

c2=selectevery(last, 2, 1)

Overlay(c1, c2, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)

AssumeFPS(24)

======== Script for 8 times speed up:

DirectShowSource("C:\dir1\dir2\file.mts")

c1=selectevery(last, 8, 0)

c2=selectevery(last, 8, 1)

c3=selectevery(last, 8, 2)

c4=selectevery(last, 8, 3)

c5=selectevery(last, 8, 4)

c6=selectevery(last, 8, 5)

c7=selectevery(last, 8, 6)

c8=selectevery(last, 8, 7)

blend1 = Overlay(c1, c2, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)

blend2 = Overlay(c3, c4, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)

blend3 = Overlay(c5, c6, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)

blend4 = Overlay(c7, c8, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)

blend5 = Overlay(blend1, blend2, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)

blend6 = Overlay(blend3, blend4, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)

Overlay(blend5, blend6, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)

AssumeFPS(24)

===================

etc....

mangomonster

@Balazar: This is fascinating to me but I'm also a noob when it comes to time lapse. Could you perhaps answer a few questions?

1 - is it possible to set the GOP from 1 to 13 for only the 24L so I can still use my Driftwood Hack for the 24H? That would mean 24L would be only for time lapse and 24H would be for standard 24p filming.

2 Is it true that simply by changing the GOP to 13 and shooting at 1/2 shutter, I will be recording less information to the card so that I can get longer recording times? Currently, I can only shoot film for ~20 minutes on a 16gb card using the 100mbs hack. I'd love to be able to go for much longer times with full 1080p time lapse!

3 Your work flow is for Sony Vegas on a PC. Is there any work flow for Final Cut Pro that you can recommend? It looks like you're doing something much more complicated than just throwing the video on a timeline and speeding it up

Thanks for any help with these beginner questions!

Kihlian

@tida very impressive, Komplimente!

tida

@Kihlian now two timelapses in one..

tida

@Kihlian in reality also the trees were not moving by the wind. Movements I have to test - using an averaged picture from a video would have the advantage to erease moving objects.

But you are also able to work with a clip2 at 1/50s. Then you run at different times. Like cars are passing by as normal and clouds are racing....

Kihlian

For the exposure it´s great, but in thys case it looks strange because the shadows don´t change and also the trees don´t move. Looks like a scary movie.

tida

Following Video is a HDR Exposure Fusion timelapse generated by 1080p 25fps at 1/2s shutter speed, 360 degree and approx 65x times. All out of Avisynth workflow which takes only few minutes.

Fusion took place by: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=152109

clip1: timelapse video where the clouds were exposed correctly

clip2: averaged 1 minute video transferred to one single image, which was taken before timelapse started. Where dark areas were exposed corretly.

It was generated this morning. In south of Germany - only a little bit of snow was fallen on the streets at night. You will find fine details everywhere...

tida

But also without the hack you achieve beautiful timelapse. Just use AVISYNTH for blending and frame jumping. Record at normal 24p or 25p at low shutter speed that you come close to 360 degree. With these recommended 4 blending types of @balazer the advantage is that also noise will be reduced in lowlight at higher iso.

I use the AVI Script creator of MEGUI and you will have a very short workflow. That is due to the fact that you can use a draft script. From that a new script will be created automtically in the same folder under same name and final mp4 file will be directly generated from the GH2 mts files under same name.... and you can add one jobs after the other which will processed automatically.

balazer

@tobnyot, try Aquamotion for variable movie mode.

Kihlian

Me too..

Meierhans

I second the request for modified variable mode to meet the 2 fps. I know there is alot other stuff more important, but it would indeed be nice.

Braamokiev

@balazer

Oh yes your are the best!!! thanks ;-)

1 - is it possible to set the GOP from 1 to 13 for only the 24L so I can still use my Driftwood Hack for the 24H? That would mean 24L would be only for time lapse and 24H would be for standard 24p filming.

3 Your work flow is for Sony Vegas on a PC. Is there any work flow for Final Cut Pro that you can recommend? It looks like you're doing something much more complicated than just throwing the video on a timeline and speeding it up

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