Time lapse question

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Time lapse question

Postby bsphoto » Fri Nov 07, 2008 4:06 pm

Hi. I am new here. Have been using PSG to make slide shows of weddings and HS seniors,etc. Works great.

I am building a new house and want to do a time lapse show of images taken over a period of time and compress them into a fast time lapse version. Lets say I take 200 pics. I want to compress that into a short 1 min movie. Is that possible in PSG, or do I need a different program. Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

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Re: Time lapse question

Postby Studio7Productions » Fri Nov 07, 2008 4:19 pm

This sounds like a good idea, and yes it can be done using PSG, you just play around with the slide times, and transition times.
The only problem you will have is lining up the pics...if you could set up a tripod and camera in a position it could be left, that would be the route to go with that.

Good Luck

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Re: Time lapse question

Postby DickK » Fri Nov 07, 2008 4:25 pm

bsphoto wrote:... want to do a time lapse show of images taken over a period of time and compress them into a fast time lapse version. Lets say I take 200 pics. I want to compress that into a short 1 min movie. Is that possible in PSG, or do I need a different program...

First, welcome aboard!

Sure, no reason you can't do that. Just drop the whole batch onto the timeline. Depending on what you want the video to look like you would set a transition but if you really want 200 images in a minute then use a cut/zero time. With 200 slides in 60 seconds that's really not enough time to see the individual pictures since that's roughly 3 pictures every second! If you want a time-lapse movie, experiment with the time for each image starting with maybe .5 seconds, that's just under 2 minutes and might work. But you can just fiddle with the timing very easily if they're all the same until you get what you want.

One thing to watch out for is that if the images are large and the display time short, the preview may not be able to keep up and may not look exactly like what you'll otherwise see. If that seems to happen, just try making an EXE which is pretty quick and should run smoothly if your PC is typical.

Dick
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Re: Time lapse question

Postby bsphoto » Fri Nov 07, 2008 6:01 pm

Studio7Productions wrote:The only problem you will have is lining up the pics...if you could set up a tripod and camera in a position it could be left, that would be the route to go with that.
Good Luck
mel


Thanks. I did this in my first try. I used a tripod and a mini notebook running camera control software shooting every 30 sec for 3 hours ( This was of my basement walls being installed.). Turned those into a slideshow timing the slides at 1 sec each and no transitions. Still ran slowly. Tried .005 sec. Still the same when it runs. I had resized the images first to make the files smaller, but it is not working. Any thoughs

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Re: Time lapse question

Postby debngar » Fri Nov 07, 2008 6:15 pm

Don't mess with file sizes because that just degrades the quality of the images.

1 second per slide is too long. Rather than putting the time into the slides, try setting the transitions to A/B for about .3 to .5 (a third to a half of a second or less if need be) and each slide timing to "0" and see what that looks like.

If you really want it to come out to a specified period of time, just do the math with a calculator. But I would use the time in the transition, not the slide timing.

Keep us posted.
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Re: Time lapse question

Postby bsphoto » Fri Nov 07, 2008 6:42 pm

debngar wrote:Don't mess with file sizes because that just degrades the quality of the images.
1 second per slide is too long. Rather than putting the time into the slides, try setting the transitions to A/B for about .3 to .5 (a third to a half of a second or less if need be) and each slide timing to "0" and see what that looks like.
If you really want it to come out to a specified period of time, just do the math with a calculator. But I would use the time in the transition, not the slide timing.
Keep us posted.


Yea!!! That did it. Perfect. You are awesome.

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Re: Time lapse question

Postby debngar » Fri Nov 07, 2008 6:59 pm

Glad that worked for you.

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Re: Time lapse question

Postby BarbaraC » Sat Nov 08, 2008 5:58 am

Debbie, that's a tip worthy of The Book. Too bad it isn't in there. I'm pulling your description into a Word file so I can add it to my private stash.

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Re: Time lapse question

Postby gpsmikey » Sat Nov 08, 2008 6:06 am

That's a good point - a lot of people lose sight of the fact that the duration of a slide is made up of the slide time AND the transition time. I'm not quite sure how you do the math to time it exactly if that is what you want since I am not sure at what point the transition time of the previous slide overlaps the transition time of the current slide. Would have to experiment with that a bit to get it right.

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Re: Time lapse question

Postby debngar » Sat Nov 08, 2008 7:39 am

I'm not quite sure how you do the math to time it exactly if that is what you want since I am not sure at what point the transition time of the previous slide overlaps the transition time of the current slide.


The original desire of the poster was to put a show together that spanned 1 minute. Taking 200 slides divided by 60 equals .3. That happens to work pretty good regardless of how long the overall time is without making it look too jerky or too slow and blurry as long as you put it in the transition time. So I typically use something in the .3 to .5 range now for my burst shots and put that time into transition only.

When I was trying to figure this out a while back, Jean in the other group came up with the settings of .3 to .5 after some of her own testings. I tried it and agree that this seems to present the best looking effect.

What would be nice is if Producer would give you 3 choices to pick what the show would auto sync to with the music. So you would have a choice of both transition and slide time, or slide time only, or transition time only. Right now, it only syncs music using both transition and slide time. There are no other choices.
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Re: Time lapse question

Postby DickK » Sat Nov 08, 2008 8:55 am

debngar wrote:...Rather than putting the time into the slides, try setting the transitions to A/B for about .3 to .5 (a third to a half of a second or less if need be) and each slide timing to "0" and see what that looks like...


8) I wonder how long I'd have gone before ever trying that :!: :?:

Great tip! Deb, if you would, could you post a couple sentences with time lapse as a subject in the Tips and Tricks section? I'll get it linked to both Producer and Gold sections.

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Re: Time lapse question

Postby debngar » Sat Nov 08, 2008 9:14 am

Ok, I started a new topic thread with Time Lapse Effect as the subject. I'll also create one in the Producer section too.
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Re: Time lapse question

Postby DickK » Sat Nov 08, 2008 7:24 pm

Excellent, thanks. We need more little tips like that -- easy stuff, easy to overlook!
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Re: Time lapse question

Postby im42n8 » Sat Nov 08, 2008 10:21 pm

Mikey,

I'm not sure if this answers the question exactly ... since it depends on the transition. However, the quick answer is that each slide involved in a transition is there at the beginning and the end. At the beginning, one is completely visible while the other is completely invisible. At the end their situations are reversed. At the center of the transition period, each slide is 50% visible.

Basically, (for the crossfade blend - linear) as Slide A begins to transition out, Slide B begins to transition in. As the transition out begins, slide A is at 100% visible and Slide B is at 100% transparent. At the center point of the transition out, Slide A and Slide B are both 50% visible. At the end of the transition out, Slide A is 100% transparent and Slide B is 100% visible. The same thing occurs in reverse for the transition in.

Hence, this is probably why you want to consider a very small (if any) slide time and a short transition time (using the a/b crossfade) for the time lapse slides. The crossfade takes some of the edge off the slide-to-slide view and makes it a smoother viewing. Playing with both (slide time and transition time) will probably be required as Debbie said. That's what I had to do in my Tulip time lapse show.

Dale

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Re: Time lapse question

Postby gpsmikey » Sun Nov 09, 2008 6:28 am

Correct -- I wasn't questioning the how, simply pointing out that without doing some experimenting, I wasn't sure that you could say that for example 20 slides with 0 "hold time" and a 1/2 second transition in and out didn't necessarily add up to 20 seconds ( 20 * ( 0.5 + 0.0 + 0.5)) due to the overlap during transitions. The technique works great and it was great that Debbie brought it up (I have used it myself a number of times, I just had not thought to mention it here). Another one of those handy tricks :D

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