Hi all,

The title says it all. A bit before Xmas I build a studio for one of my client and did a timelapse with my 60D. It was a last minute decision and I just had time to find out that I could do it manually using my laptop and the included EOS utility.

Googling my issue yield so many solutions, almost all included 3rd party software I do not wish to purchase/install.

What is your workflow for timelapses?

Thanks

Phil, are you Mac or PC?

PC

Oh and I did shoot in RAW

Tools that I have on my comp: Vegas, After Effects, all the programs that came with the 60D

First you'll have to convert all the stills to jpeg - you might need to do at least a little colour processing at this point to get it pretty close to how you want it to look in the final product. When you convert them do not rename any of them as you want to keep the original numbering.

It's been many years since I used Vegas so I've forgotten if it can do this also, but in After Effects you can simply import an image sequence as a single clip. Go to file>import and navigate to the folder full of images. Click on the first image in the sequence, & If they all have sequential names & numbers, a checkbox will appear in the bottom of the window saying "Jpeg Sequence." Make sure that is checked and hit import.

You end up with a single clip made up of all your images in sequence, at a default frame rate of 30fps. Create a new comp at your project settings. Interpret the image sequence to the same frame rate as your comp, and drop it into the comp. Now you can crop, reframe and make and make any other necessary adjustments before sending it to Vegas to cut into a project.

In addition to what John has said you could also try to output different 'exposure' versions of the same RAW file to JPEGs, for maximum dynamic range. Blending them could be done in Photoshop and then imported to AE.

Ideally I'd want to work with TIFF images instead of JPEGs, but this will depend on your footage and needs.

If you want to work in RAW, you could convert your RAW files into DNG and import them directly to AE as an image sequence.

In Vegas, you go to "options", then "preferences", then "editing". In that menu you can choose how long each photo will display for. Depending on your time lapse, 0.35 seconds (10 frames per image at 24fps) is a nice starting point. If we shoot with continuous shooting, we'll do it even less time per image and match it up with a song as best we can.

I create title cards first, then add the images to the project media. When you add the images they are already selected so you can just drag it onto your timeline. soundtrack it, and render.

This works:

If stills are raw, use the free and wonderful irfanview to batch convert them. Generally, PNGs are better than JPGs in Vegas.

Then, File | Import | Image sequence in Vegas, noting the prefs Robert mentions above.

However, you have a basic decision to make - if you are going to show the full-frame, you might go ahead and batch reduce the frame dimensions to 1920x1080 or 1280x720 in Irfanview before import to Vegas. Preview will be a lot nicer.

OTOH, if you want to do some camera moves in post, and shooting a timelapse at the max rez on a 60D gives you lots of opportunity to do this, your original-dimension pngs are going to preview like a pig... but in a 1080p or 720p project you can zoom, pan, cut to different framing, and have all kinds of fun.

Sareesh = That seems a tad too advance for me, in any case I don't have PS, so there you go

Seth & Robert = Thanks fellas i'll keep your pointers in mind for the timelapse I will make

John = Of course, importing the jpeg as a sequence, why didn't I think of that :)

Although I shot in RAW the cammy also made a duplicate as a high res jpeg, so there is no need for conversion. I also found that I took too many pics and shortened the timelapse by deleting ranges of photos. Irfanview came in handy for batch renaming what remained.

Thanks all !

Couple quick thoughts:
If you don't have lightroom or PS there's no reason to shoot in RAW, you might as well just always shoot JPEG.

When I'm feeling lazy I use a free program I got called Time Lapse Assembler, it works fine.

If your time-lapse is too long you're generally better off speeding it up in post rather than deleting frames, as it's easier and will work out better in general.

There is a good forum for timelapse at

Timescapes - Digital Timelapse Discussion - Index page (http://forum.timescapes.org/phpBB3/index.php)

Adorama Photography TV - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/adoramaTV/videos?query=time+lapse)

Adjust raw files in adob camera raw ( adjust wb, sharpen, Denoise etc)

Import raw files as an image sequence into AE

Use warp stabals in ae if needed

Drag image sequence into a comp ( I will create a 5k video comp, use the room to reframe if desired
(the extra room also helps with warp )

Change comp settings to 16 bit

From here I scale th comp down to 4k, export a 4k video and a 1080p one