Time Lapse setting's

[Guy Godwin]

Folks, I am wanting to do a time lapse project. Would like to do a sun up/sun down and a natural progression on a 10 hour assembly project. I dont want to have to deal with the camera for any of these items. Do you know a good setting that I can use?

ideas?

[Tom Blizzard]

The A1 or A1s do time lapse ????????

[Don Palomaki]

Some capture programs allow time lapse capture (e.g., a frame every user specified number of seconds). That may be the best apprach.

[Kevin Currie]

Originally Posted by Don Palomaki

Some capture programs allow time lapse capture (e.g., a frame every user specified number of seconds). That may be the best apprach.

Adobe OnLocation works well for this.

[Tom Blizzard]

Can you use On Location in post to make the time lapse?

[Roger Van Duyn]

Originally Posted by Guy Godwin

Folks, I am wanting to do a time lapse project. Would like to do a sun up/sun down and a natural progression on a 10 hour assembly project. I dont want to have to deal with the camera for any of these items. Do you know a good setting that I can use?

ideas?

What about tape changes?

When you are saying that you don't want to deal with the camera...you are capturing to some sort of external recorder, not tape, aren't you? When I do a timelapse, my external CitiDisk HDV will hold about 4 1/2 hours of footage, and I do the timelapse in post. While not a full day of dawn to dusk, it's a lot longer than a tape. You're looking at about a dozen 60 minute tapes for a full day. I have some 80 minute tapes, but that's still a lot of tape changes.

A better approach might be a digital slr with an intervalometer function. You don't need an slr that shoots video. Just one with an intervalometer.

[Wil Vermeesch]

The question is in my opinion what must be the settings?

[Eric Olson]

Originally Posted by Roger Van Duyn

What about tape changes?

If you have a computer with firewire port nearby, you could stream over firewire direct to hard disk. This allows recording times measured in days. For longer times only write a certain percentage of the captured frames to hard disk.

[Roger Van Duyn]

Originally Posted by Wil Vermeesch

The question is in my opinion what must be the settings?

I'm not sure what you are asking for regarding settings. Are you wanting to set up the A1 and leave it unattended all day, and later turn the footage into a timelapse?

It that's what you are asking, there are no specific settings in an A1 as regards to a timelapse, for say, grabbing a frame every minute or so throughout the day. That would be what an intervalometer does on an SLR.

However, if you are talking about settings for exposure etc., that will change throughout the day as light levels change. You may be able to leave all that on automatic. But I never use automatic exposure. Never. I use Auto Focus a lot, but exposure I control manually. From time to time throughout the day, you will probably need to adjust your settings.

[Roger Van Duyn]

Originally Posted by Eric Olson

If you have a computer with firewire port nearby, you could stream over firewire direct to hard disk. This allows recording times measured in days. For longer times only write a certain percentage of the captured frames to hard disk.

Yeah, the laptop and it's software would handle the intervalometer functions. I sometimes capture to a laptop, but haven't come across a way to just grab a frame at regular intervals to the laptop's hard drive with any of the programs I've got. So I always have to capture live, full speed video with the laptop, then select frames from a full capture and do the timelapse in post. But the CitiDisk attached to the camera is more convenient on most of my shoots, and 4 1/2 hours is usually enough. Sometimes I copy footage over from the CitiDisk to the laptop during lunch break.

So, capturing live footage I wind up capturing about 12 gb or so per hour with HDV, if I remember correctly. So a day would be roughly 150 gb or so for the original poster. Certainly reasonable considering today's large capacity drives.

IF you have found a way of just capturing frames at intervals, instead of live video, what software are you using to do it? That's probably what the OP would want, since the camera itself can't do it.

[Kevin Currie]

Originally Posted by Roger Van Duyn

IF you have found a way of just capturing frames at intervals, instead of live video, what software are you using to do it? That's probably what the OP would want, since the camera itself can't do it.

I have not intentially recorded anything time lapse yet, but I did by accident the first time I used On Location. The A1 connect to the laptop via firewire and the software recorded only single frames at regular intervals to the hard drive. I shot about 30 minutes of footage and the video was less than a minute long of time lapsed action. (luckily I had tape back up) On Location also lets you record to both tape and hard drive, or just hard drive, which is what you would want for a 12+ hour shoot.

PS: It looks like On Location has been dropped from Adobe's Production Premium CS6 so get it now, while you still can.