Author Topic: My first time lapse video - Building an Igloo (Read 42685 times)

batman · « **Reply #25 on:** April 30, 2009, 22:24 »

Quote from: click_click on April 30, 2009, 22:15

Nice start,
time lapse videos are very touchy to do (in my opinion - I'm trying to get them perfect...).

First problem is the sun moving around and especially creating funny shadows in your scene.

Well it takes careful scouting to find the right spot for that and the right time of day to do that.

out there in the open, it would be difficult not to have the shadow moving. the sun moves across the earth with time. it's not like being in the city where it's easy to scout for a better lighting position to avoid this growing or subsiding shadow. don't you think?

click_click · « **Reply #26 on:** May 01, 2009, 08:13 »

Quote from: batman on April 30, 2009, 22:24

out there in the open, it would be difficult not to have the shadow moving. the sun moves across the earth with time. it's not like being in the city where it's easy to scout for a better lighting position to avoid this growing or subsiding shadow. don't you think?

Hey, I never said it is easy...

I'm well aware that in winter or in such cold areas you face the problem of the sun shining really low at most times of the day. Of course it is a challenge to find the best spot possible to set up the camera.

In 100% of the cases when I do a time lapse, I find an issue with it. Every time I see a problem I try to avoid it the next time. But that doesn't mean that you eliminated all problems - new ones will come and they mostly come with the location. If you don't know your location well, there is a high chance of running into an issue.

For instance, I was doing a time lapse of tourists on the beach. Perfect weather, perfect amount of people on the beach, perfect spot for camera so some idiots can't walk in front of it, asking me what . I'm doing - and guess what?

People on the beach started feeding birds. I mean what's wrong with them? You think that people go to the beach to hang out and relax but hey it seemed like everyone brought their old bread to the beach because they didn't want to throw it into the bin. It got to the point where people actually dumped half empty bags of chips just because it was "sooooo funny"...

So they started throwing crumbs onto the beach and within minutes there were hundreds of pigeons and seagulls all over the place. Try cloning those suckers out of 200 images (preserving moving clouds) out of a series of 300 pics.

Another problem was that birds are not stationary. They don't just land, eat and go straight up in the air. No, they have to fly half a mile down the beach to tell their buddies that there is food and then come back. So the entire beach (and it was a big one) was filled with flocks of birds.

My session was over.

All I'm saying is that sometime you simply have no control over the circumstances. I'm not saying that the OP was lazy by not considering the shadows.
Probably most buyers don't give a rat's ass if there are shadows or not. I'm just pin pointing little details that might enhance the overall quality.

batman · « **Reply #27 on:** May 02, 2009, 16:04 »

Quote from: click_click on May 01, 2009, 08:13

Another problem was that birds are not stationary. They don't just land, eat and go straight up in the air. No, they have to fly half a mile down the beach to tell their buddies that there is food and then come back. So the entire beach (and it was a big one) was filled with flocks of birds.

My session was over.

All I'm saying is that sometime you simply have no control over the circumstances. I'm not saying that the OP was lazy by not considering the shadows.
Probably most buyers don't give a rat's ass if there are shadows or not. I'm just pin pointing little details that might enhance the overall quality.

Got your point.
As for the birds, next time bring a shotgun , no that would get you arrested, get a starter gun or something that will create a loud noise to get the birds to go elsewhere

As for the nosey people asking you what'cha doing? Ya, a shotgun would work better

click_click · « **Reply #28 on:** May 02, 2009, 16:14 »

Quote from: batman on May 02, 2009, 16:04

Got your point.
As for the birds, next time bring a shotgun , no that would get you arrested, get a starter gun or something that will create a loud noise to get the birds to go elsewhere
As for the nosey people asking you what'cha doing? Ya, a shotgun would work better

I know what you mean...

Here in the US you make yourself a lot of enemies and problems showing up with a gun or a fake one even.

I just gotta put up with the birds and the idiots...

batman · « **Reply #29 on:** May 02, 2009, 16:15 »

Quote from: click_click on May 02, 2009, 16:14

Quote from: batman on May 02, 2009, 16:04
Got your point.
As for the birds, next time bring a shotgun , no that would get you arrested, get a starter gun or something that will create a loud noise to get the birds to go elsewhere
As for the nosey people asking you what'cha doing? Ya, a shotgun would work better

I know what you mean...

Here in the US you make yourself a lot of enemies and problems showing up with a gun or a fake one even.

I just gotta put up with the birds and the idiots...

hey click2, learn to fart loudly. that could drive both the birds and idiots away

click_click · « **Reply #30 on:** May 02, 2009, 17:00 »

Quote from: batman on May 02, 2009, 16:15

hey click2, learn to fart loudly. that could drive both the birds and idiots away

No need to learn (anymore)...

sharpshot · « **Reply #31 on:** May 23, 2009, 14:30 »

I found this one on youtube and thought some people here might find it interesting. Don't think any of mine will be this long

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd4f2xeKg08" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd4f2xeKg08</a>

MicrostockExp · « **Reply #32 on:** May 23, 2009, 15:06 »

Interesting to see how the baldness is slowly coming .......

litifeta · « **Reply #33 on:** May 23, 2009, 17:21 »

NOthing to say on the technical aspects BUT.

For someone who has never seen snow I thought it was FANTASTIC!

Surely you could sell that. I was amazed at how the blocks hold up facing inwards.

leaf · « **Reply #34 on:** May 25, 2009, 01:12 »

yeah the blocks are very hard - they could be compared to Styrofoam. The even make a squeaking sound when you rub them against each other if it is cold like it was in the video (-20 Celsius). I ran out of blocks on the inside (the ground came sooner than I thought) so I had to get them from the outside of the igloo. Those blocks I had to push through the door and 'kick' further into the igloo so I could get more and still have room to get in. There was a messy pile of blocks laying on every side when I crawled over them and they all held up.

Snow that has been blown (lots) by snow is very hard - fluffy snow that has just fallen does is still like light feathers.

lephotography · « **Reply #35 on:** May 25, 2009, 12:55 »

That was just so darn cool!!! No pun intended.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #36 on:** May 27, 2009, 11:00 »

What frame rate did you use for the final?

The 3 seconds looks good. I've done some testing with a webcam and I thought that clouds looked good at 5 second intervals, but if there's something else, it may need to be faster to get a smoother appearance.

I have Animation Shop 3, it does animations, which I don't have a clue if it will handle 500 big shots, but I'm going to be using the 20D to keep the size reasonable. Should be just large enough for Micro at 8mp. Yes, No?

leaf · « **Reply #37 on:** May 27, 2009, 12:55 »

I would downsize the images in photoshop (with a macro) before sending them to your software. Adobe premiere and after effects got really bogged down even when I was using the 'smallish' 6mp jpg images i shot. I downsized and cropped them in photoshop first and things went a little faster but was still extremely slow.

I forget what the final frame rate was - perhaps 30 fps though. I know I was trying that first but I forget if I changed in the final version or not. I had such problems getting the After Effects output file small enough I ended up fiddling with quite a few settings and eventually going over to Adobe Premiere.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #38 on:** June 15, 2009, 12:30 »

Quote from: leaf on May 27, 2009, 12:55

I would downsize the images in photoshop (with a macro) before sending them to your software. Adobe premiere and after effects got really bogged down even when I was using the 'smallish' 6mp jpg images i shot. I downsized and cropped them in photoshop first and things went a little faster but was still extremely slow.

I forget what the final frame rate was - perhaps 30 fps though. I know I was trying that first but I forget if I changed in the final version or not. I had such problems getting the After Effects output file small enough I ended up fiddling with quite a few settings and eventually going over to Adobe Premiere.

Just tried one with Animation Shop 3 from JASC, dropped dead, locked up, reduced the photos to 25%, error in processing, totally crapped out, when I dropped the frames to 200 shots on my desktop (test was on a laptop on location) it was closer to working. More memory and everything, but still failed. 20D with a 2gb card I get just over 500 photos to render. I figured if I wanted to try to make something with enough resolution for Micro I'd have to use full image quality, maybe I'm wrong. This is all new.

Unless someone suggests something better, do I assume that the answer is Adobe Premiere? How about Elements Professional the video editing software or what do people use who are making these big ones that we see on the sites. I'm too lazy to test and try a dozen failed pieces of software. I have a server with raid drives and 3gb memory, two dual core processors, which should be about as good as it's going to get.

I don't care what software I need, I just want whatever works to end the frustration.

leaf · « **Reply #39 on:** June 15, 2009, 12:39 »

well HD video is only 1920x1080 pixels so that is the max size your images should be. If they aren't that size, resize them in photoshop first.

I got it to work with both Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects. You can download both for a 30day trial. After effects is apparently the more suited program but I had problems saving a file that was a small size in the end... i am sure it is possible though if I could figure out how.

madelaide · « **Reply #40 on:** June 15, 2009, 16:05 »

Quote from: RacePhoto on June 15, 2009, 12:30

Just tried one with Animation Shop 3 from JASC,

Are you sure this is suitable for the job? When I used it (in PSP7, I don't even know if I have it in my PSP XII), it was for generating animated GIFs only.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #41 on:** June 22, 2009, 18:03 »

Quote from: madelaide on June 15, 2009, 16:05

Quote from: RacePhoto on June 15, 2009, 12:30
Just tried one with Animation Shop 3 from JASC,

Are you sure this is suitable for the job? When I used it (in PSP7, I don't even know if I have it in my PSP XII), it was for generating animated GIFs only.

It has a selection for exporting the file as an AVI which I wanted to do, just for fun. It has been fine for GIFs, in fact my current Avatar was done with it.

You're probably right, I'm starting out with the wrong software which is the first problem.

Gregor909 · « **Reply #42 on:** August 29, 2009, 21:52 »

Great movie Leaf!
I'm dabbling with time lapse myself, but I use Photoshop Extended!
And I got the flickering going on too.
Can the flickering be removed with the "interlace flickering removal"-action?

noam · « **Reply #43 on:** August 30, 2009, 19:18 »

Hi leaf.

Cool (literaly) video you got there.

I have (for now) 4 time lapse video clips in my SS gallery here:
http://footage.shutterstock.com/videos.html?submitter_id=109921

I did them all in photoshop cs4 first working in raw file converter, cropping to 1080x1920px removing all spots, and saving as jpeg in a new folder. Then I open them all as a video layer in PS CS4 learn here how: http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/?id=vid0027 - the link doesn't seem to work right, the video you should look for is "working with image sequence" and than exporting them into a quicktime movie, in jpeg-photo compression.

Noam

Gregor909 · « **Reply #44 on:** August 30, 2009, 21:27 »

Looks good Noam!
How did you get rid of the flickering?

noam · « **Reply #45 on:** August 31, 2009, 00:56 »

Quote from: Gregor909 on August 30, 2009, 21:27

How did you get rid of the flickering?

I don't really know. I shoot them at the rate of a frame every 7 to 10 seconds, compressed, and save them at 24fps. Luckily it works for me.

Gregor909 · « **Reply #46 on:** September 18, 2009, 12:01 »

Yes!! I got my first HD movie online!

Not really impressive, and a little short too.
But this one was for testing the waters first, to know if I did everything right and get my video's accepted!

http://eu.fotolia.com/id/16886771

Now lets try the more difficult sites!

sharpshot · « **Reply #47 on:** February 21, 2010, 04:42 »

I have a few time lapse clips approved on pond5 now. Quite like this one. It also has my referral link.

St. Ives time lapse

ShadySue · « **Reply #48 on:** February 21, 2010, 08:21 »

Love it, Leaf.
That couldn't have been the first time you built an igloo, surely? You seem to be such an expert.
I think the shadow moving really adds to this particular video.

leaf · « **Reply #49 on:** February 21, 2010, 08:42 »

Yeah it is sort of an Easter tradition to build an igloo so I have built a few. I wasn't used to using such hard snow - which was great, but different. You can see a couple times that a few blocks fall in and I have to put them up again. it is a challenge working by yourself.

I was also supposed to have enough snow INSIDE the igloo to make the whole thing - which would have sped things up quite a bit, but I realized that the snow wasn't very deep AFTER i started building so I had to go and get snow from outside the igloo.

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Author Topic: My first time lapse video - Building an Igloo (Read 42685 times)

batman

click_click

batman

click_click

batman

click_click

sharpshot

MicrostockExp

litifeta

leaf

lephotography

RacePhoto

leaf

RacePhoto

leaf

madelaide

RacePhoto

Gregor909

noam

Gregor909

noam

Gregor909

sharpshot

ShadySue

leaf

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