Time Lapse Dimensions Issue

Hello all,

I have recently been trying out time lapse photography, but am having some issues when I get the shots into a video.

For my first attempt I shot about 900 images in RAW, converted them to JPG, imported them into windows live movie maker, then created a video by making the duration of each image about .03 seconds. The video came out okay, but for some reason while playing the video, it was changing dimensions. For instance, at one moment the video would be a certain size on the screen, then for a few seconds a different size, then switching back and forth rapidly for a duration then staying the same for a period of time. It wasn't horrible but it was sort of ruining the effect.

NOTE: The video would change dimensions at the same times for every playback.

For the next attempt I tried shooting about 900 shots again, but this time in JPG, and the same problem occurred but much more frequently.

Has anyone else experienced issues like this? Or can anyone give some explanation as to why this may be occurring?

I wouldn't think the issue lies with the camera taking the images because it stays on all of the same manual settings throughout the entire process.

If the problem lies with windows live movie maker, is there any software that is generally suggested for this type of thing? I have heard good things about Quicktime PRO, but am not sure if I want to go for it until I understand this issue better.

Thanks in advance!

I'm pretty sure you can load a sequentially numbered set of images into VirtualDub. It's free. It's fast. It's got some limitations, like it only reads and writes AVI format videos. Once you open the images, figure out how to set the frame rate. Choose a video codec, and set the encoding options. Then ask it to render you out an AVI.

I have played with time lapse off an on for the last few years. I use adobe for mine.

I would be certain your problem isn't in the camera. As long as you use the same size from one file to the next.

Your pictures will not match the size of your video. I would almost bet your problem is in your options on your video software, it has to resize the pics to match what it is making. It took me a while to figure this out in Pro, but I bet you have a similar option with the program you are using. Sorry I couldn't be more help, but if I were you I would be doing google searches to see if you have this function.

I normally shoot in RAW, doing stop action is a good reason to shoot in JPG and get it right at the camera. It is a pain to process thousands of pics for less than a minute of video.

Edit: another thing that can make the video get a bit flakey is the size of the JPG's you are importing. If you are using large JPG's your computer and program may be getting bogged down.

My best guess is that Windows Movie Maker is cropping your 3:2 images to 16:9 by looking at the content and trying to choose which part is safe to lose (such as facial recognition). If that's correct, it may not choose the same part of the image every time (sometimes top, sometimes bottom, etc.). If you can't find out how to disable that feature, you could try a different program. I use and recommend VirtualDub (free), Sony Vegas (cheap), and After Effects (expensive).

Thanks for the responses guys.

@ HDNitehawk - I tried looking around for settings that would fix the ratios issue, but I couldn't find anything that was really helpful... Windows live movie maker is fairly limited when it comes to editing, at least from what i have found.

@David - I also tried using virtualdub and got a really low quality video for some reason. I will keep at it and try to find some different tutorials and such online, so I'll post back again if I can find a solution.

Thanks for the different options Daniel, I'll be looking into those this weekend.

@OJ If you have Quicktime Pro it can make pretty decent movies from a series of stills with all sorts of compression and bitrate options. Or best yet, a full-blown raw *.mov option which is awesome to watch if your computer can handle it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ChadS

@OJ If you have Quicktime Pro it can make pretty decent movies from a series of stills with all sorts of compression and bitrate options. Or best yet, a full-blown raw *.mov option which is awesome to watch if your computer can handle it.

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^this. I use QuickTime Pro for all of my timelapse videos, then adobe to edit the compiled video.

Have played around with timelapse movies and slideshows. What has always worked the best for me is to batch process all of the stills to match the desired resolution in the video format.