Time-lapse movie creator

[beanbag]

I know this is probably not the best place to have this but if the mods could keep it here as it's quite urgent and I need to get this sorted asap, it would be appreciated!

(Used to be in the P&P but mods are getting stupidly strict these days....not like the old pre-Haymarket days).....anyway.....

So....what's needed. I've got to create a time-lapse video from 5004 picture stills that I have stored on my PC.

They are all in date order, so I need a bit of software to put them into a movie at 25fps. Movie maker can't handle the number of files and can't do the required framerate so could anyone recommend a program to do this please?

Just as a sidenote....it needs to be freeware as I'm not making any money out of this and it's for a friend of mine.

Thanks!

BB

Edited by beanbag on Thursday 25th September 15:00

[sevros1981]

Not free, but adobe after effects or premiere pro should help - you may... find a download from one of those sites for it. otherwise - drop me a pm and ill see if i can do it over the next couple of weeks.

[beanbag]

sevros1981 said:

Not free, but adobe after effects or premiere pro should help - you may... find a download from one of those sites for it. otherwise - drop me a pm and ill see if i can do it over the next couple of weeks.

Cheers for the offer...unfortunately we need the first "sample" this afternoon, but if the offer is still on when we're ready to do the whole thing, I'll let you know.....

Thanks!

[GetCarter]

I used Proshow gold for mine http://www.stevecarter.com/timelapse.htm

..and there is a fully functional free trial here http://www.photodex.com/downloads (check you can save etc!)

[tank slapper]

I have used a freeware programme called jpgvideo to do this in the past. Website is here, but seems to be a bit messed up at the moment. The download link appears to work though.

[filski666]

adobe premiere is great for this - have done it to create animations from CAD renders which ran into several thousand still jpegs. You can batch load them in - makes it very easy and not (too) time consuming. Mine were used for PR presentations so the quality was top notch - easily cope with 25fps.

[beanbag]

Hi chaps,

Cheers for the suggestions. I played with a few but ended up using PhotoLapse which is freeware:

http://home.hccnet.nl/s.vd.palen/index.html

The only problem however was the filenames my webcam created were no in file order and could only be sorted by "date modified". This meant I had to rename them all to load them in sequence in PhotoLapse.

For that I used BulkRenameUtility: http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php

It's a little complicated to use but it does the job and the movie was created perfectly at 25fps.

Once again, thanks for the help!

BB

[CVP]

Help time please fellow PHers

I've been trying Photolapse and all appears well until all the images have been asaved as a .avi movie then right when it processes the last image it gives me an error a message saying a codec may be missing and so it cannot play the movie using media player (v11).

Helpfully of course, it doesn't tell me which one is missing

I have tried downloading a codec pack from MS but still get the same error. Is there any resource out there that can identify which codec is missing?

As an aside, yes I know I was talking about getting a Mac but the fx rate to USD has moved right a aginst me at the moment so the old Windows machine soldiers on for a while longer.

Chris

[GetCarter]

IIRC - a codec is just the way it's being compressed, so try saving it uncompressed or with different compression.

Well that's what I'd try first.

[CVP]

Good thought, however I was ahead of you there. Tried saving as without any compression and got the same error message

[ninja-lewis]

Try installing VLC Player. Contains plenty of codecs so should help solve the problem.

[CVP]

Lovely, will give it a try, many thanks.

Chris