Timelapse made Cheap and Easy with a Webcam

[blurglide]

It's been a couple years. How about an update on how you do things now?

[David5005ful]

Holly crap that's messy! -.-

[tomb1272]

you are blessed to live in such a beautiful country dude... :D

[XxJesseXdrummerxX]

look at all that ramen!

[dendrobiummf]

nice video. i recently bought a 720p webcam but I found the quality was worse than digital camera even it could take up to 8MP image. plus it doesn't have manual focus so subject that is far from the webcam is blurry.

[wan2do]

awesome video man I am going right out to try it. thanks

[megamindstorm101]

nice camera :) yeah something lots of people do for timelapse (as well as myself) if you have a playstation 3 the playstation eye makes fairly good time lapse.

[Dozerthedj]

thats the exact same webcam i used for my trip! worked great!

[IdleGod]

I'm setting this up myself for a trip on the weekend. TY for the video on "how", so I can attempt to replicate!

[Dryndal]

I actualy got the same setup (eee pc + pro 9000 cam). Works great :)

THX 4 the video Tf :)

[stulogic]

oh and just a quick note to say it's worth checking out the other solutions. There's a company called go-pro who make what they call hero cameras, cheap, VERY good quality, and again can be used via pc with the right software.

There's also the more traditional bullet cam which I've been playing with lately that come with wide angles. Both are pretty cheap, the latter more so.

[stulogic]

Worth checking the settings of your DSLR. Most nikons have auto-interval settings, not sure about canons, guess not. Definitely going to give the webcam version a go, save the shutter !

[FreudsCigar]

Very useful and interesting information.

[tobyw87]

Thanks for the video Thunderf00t! Just so you know you can actually export the timelapse sequences with animated dv into .avi files. Makes it easy for people who don't have editing programs like Sony Vegas. :) Keep doing what you are doing.

[LazyTuba]

I have the very same netbook. Awesome battery life.

[CiphersSon]

Its ironic that im working on a time lasp project and im googleing like mad and the first vid i watch is by thunderf00t and i sub to both these chans.

The lappy ideal is looking apealing because i have a eee900 and plenty of extra HDs to convert to external. but this is out doors and over 6mounths so i think ill take a old p3 or p4 and make a dead head box and a dyi weatherbox only taking 12 photos a day i have literally 4 web cams next to me right now and a stack of p3s.

[BillyBobsEel]

what do you spend your time doing when your filming a timelapse....?

[rawwqq]

lol! You have Ramen packed up!

[celestialsalamander]

the beuty in the universe chanel leads me to believe thunder foot might be a bit of a lonner

[aiyic]

Ah that song Japan, by that German band... what's their name?

[Mellemsnack]

Guano Apes :)

[aiyic]

Ha! Alphaville

[asseeninYOURDREAMS]

who's the other person???... you can see his reflection 7:30

[caveobot]

OMG It's JESUS

[Digimaul]

on the right reflected off the car? Think that's a sign, it doesn't move

[Yoshiisland1]

Hey tf00t, can I come with you? I promise, I'll bring a lot of Ramen with us.

[lennyhipp]

mmm Top Ramen!

[NomadSoul76]

Heh.. he uses the exact same memory card that I do for DSLR use. It's among the cheapest yet still reasonably capable high capacity cards out there. Just definitely not the fastest.

Another option is to find a camcorder that has a time lapse feature. I have a Sony, don't know the model name off hand, but it has a pretty flexible time lapse feature.

I don't use it near as much as I ought to. Time lapse videos can be really interesting to watch.

[MorphicStates]

LOL Great info like this and people are commenting on your eating habits. Got to love it.

[flurble33]

You "watered the nest"? Hehe, poor ants.

Imagine a tidal wave of Thunder-wee landing on you!

[BillyBobsEel]

i got a webcam for making timelapses which was ok but as i don't have a laptop its incredibly limeted. for ten times the price of the one i got i could get a wireless on but i could still only use it in my house. Im currently looking at finding the cheapest possible camera whcih can do timelapse...

[alexkidd3d]

great stuff, definitely something i'll keep in mind for upcoming trips. you might have started a trend thunderf00t.

[usedforbattle]

Web Cam, check, Laptop, check, Car with car battery... Check! looks like im off to do sum filming ^_^

[machidaman]

Awesome stuff. Will try this for my next vid, though different software being a Mac user. Any suggestions anyone?

[usedforbattle]

I movie should be able to put the shots together, I'm not sure bout the time lap photo capturing program tho, google it :P

[pliqht]

neat!

[BenTheMagnifice]

on the timelapses of driving its cool to just watch the horizon/mountains go past the car.

[dragonofthedarknight]

Omg I love top ramen. What flavor is that? I once lived a whole week on only chicken flavored ramen. Then I got sick and stopped eating it for half a year. I eat it only sometimes now.

[JohnTraviss]

The Thunder eats noodles!!?? AWSM!!

[TonyBtheEG]

Thank you for the tips brotha, keep it Top and keep it Ramen.

[Joseph565112]

Holy shit, those cars flying past ya is almost scary.

[Joseph565112]

Those ants would have a hay-day on Mars, if it were warmer of course.

[TheFartoholic]

ramen!

[apiti]

Excellent! I love your videos, keep up the good work! :)

[dykedesuyo]

love the tub of top ramen ^.^

[Airave]

Wonderful.

[dewduldrawe]

that's awesome! you could use the same setup for both timelapse and high speed recording O.o

[themanwhoknew]

I have a really old logitec webcam.

These things just don't break. They're brilliant.

[Weendigo172]

My old logitech easyshare cam broke last year, though I see your point. They're very durable.

[themanwhoknew]

Weendigo172 - You must have run over with a 18 ton truck because mine's been smashed against walls, dropped from unbelievable heights and had no care or attention put into it.

It's made from granite.

[death0intj]

nice video. but you could save yourself a lot of work with timelapse.

1. Don't install logitech drivers (with windows default drivers camera is capable of transferring MJPEG encoded data)

2. For capture use "virtual dub" (it's free) set to use WDM image capture , then in capture->settings you can set even 0.1 frames per second, and then record raw MJPEG stream.

virtual dub will let you change framerate to say 30fps later. also instead od milions of images you get single video file.

[ArranoGris]

vdub is great.

[weeeezzll]

What kind of telescope is that? I've been looking to buy one for my family to use for casual viewing, but want something that will produce interesting enough visuals to keep the kids interested. From what I've been able to find online a Dobsonian mounted "6-"8 Reflector seems to be the most suggested beginner scope. Any suggestions?

[fmschris]

ramen! woo

[wasserbrunner]

wow, nice camera man!!!!!

[BrianJunglist]

nice cam my roommate has the same one.

[awreslr2]

Fantastic and so instructive!  Thanks for all your advice and experience!

[ReverendAtomSmasher]

ramen....you cheap bastard. :-)

[cursetheman]

Oh Ramen......

[daddyleon]

How...interesting xD

[buzzausa]

"Big in Japan" by Alphaville. Wow...I hadn't heard that song in ages....thanks for the memories :D :D

Just out of curiosity......How many miles did you put on your car so far?...because....damn.....

[daddyleon]

yeah he knows my favorite music, even the ones i forgot about.

[nekolux]

IN THE NEXT VIDEO! We'll see how Tf fits in his car with all that stuff!

[utoad9]

Was that Ramen Noodles I saw? How frugal...alot of sodium though. LOL Wondering how you boil the water? Coleman style stove maybe? Maybe that could be your next tutorial!

[village1diot]

virtualdub is open source and free. It will "stitch" the photos into an AVI file.

[Pirwzwhomper]

Top Ramen, the meal of champions. (Saw it in his back seat to the left of the laptop.

[metalorg]

If you use Adobe Premeire, it has an option to import a bunch of ordered image files as one video.

If you import more than 30 files at a time the program goes crazy. Premeire is unstable and crappy in a lot of ways but it has that image series as video option which is nice.

[AncientAtheist]

When doing a time lapse of something like Jupiter, what is the advantage of setting it for 1 image per second, as opposed to, say, 1 image per 10 seconds? And would it give you more disk space, less battery usage and quicker rendering?

[TheFifthApes]

If you're talking about long exposure, 10 seconds is far too long, it would over expose jupiter. (Even 1 second exposure is too long)

If you mean one 1 second image every 10 seconds, it could be done, but jupiter rotates very quickly, and some of it's moons orbit quickly as well, so the more frames the better.

[killroy42]

Have you ever looked at using a compact? I've had a go with a Canon Ixus 75, and it has a time lapse mode to 1sec or 2sec per frame. It saves them as MJPEG encoded AVIs. I used it all the time for parties. Maybe I should put one online sometime. The optics are much better of course, but not sure about the wide angle capabilities. Also, and Acer Aspire One with a 7800mAH battery lasted over 9 hours for me on intercontinental flights.

[Crowbarazar]

^_^ YaY!! Alphaville! ^_^

It is my goal in life to become big in Japan.

[ThGreatSilence]

Very cool info on time lapses! It looks like you at the southern part of HWY 395 (Adelanto and then passed Johanesburg). I wish it would go that fast when I drive it. Assume you are in much better scenic areas now.

[BathTubNZ]

Fess up, you peed on those ants didn't you?

[jermck13]

at 0:23 is that a fart? I loled

[iscay666]

@jermck13 Sounds more like a fly XD

[SuzukiSwiftAlex]

Awesome. Are you telling me, all these videos you are making on your trip are edited together on your netbook??? if so great job!!!

[Voidic]

now I gotta steal that notbook and find tf00ts p0rnstash >:D

[spamkingdom]

it would be highly educational and amazingly epic

[airihi]

Awesome! I built a rig for timelapse on a point and shoot digital camera a few months ago- a crazy contraption using a servo with a spring mounted on the horn to push the shutter - the hard way of doing it, but it saves cutting into the case.

The results are ok - the camera lense and setting inflexibility are the biggest problems.

Had a hard time finding good software until now. Cheers!

Some I've heard some cannon cameras can take a firmware upgrade/hack that gives them a timelapse ability.

[SakuraElyse]

goddamn, i forgot how much i love "Big in Japan" until i saw this video.

now please excuse me as i play it on repeat for several hours.

[pinkishblueblack]

what a great set-up! i love all your time-lapses =D

[ligthert]

For my timelapses I use VirtualDub to glue all the independent images together. Also free BTW. Sony Vegas is a little bit out of my price range.

[OktoberSunset]

It's just a shame the US has loads of straight roads with nothing worth seeing on them :( The interesting stuff is just too far apart.

[TheMachineBiological]

When you have vast tracts of farmland several hundred miles long it's hard to make much more than straight roads :) I've always loved it when my family has driven cross country except when driving through Kansas and Oklahoma, both states are flatter than hell and seem to drag on and on. But there is usually something to see.

[PhoenixDown11]

Ramen Noodles FTW!!

[Epitome613]

Like Top Ramen? Need Top Ramen? Got a cupboard full of 'em, I'll keep 'em comin'. :)

[cowpacino]

Maruchan Ramen > Top Ramen

[KyleMc2009]

I also love Ramen Noodles.

[0okamino]

Very nice, tf00t. Ingenuity in action is such fun to watch.

[karausu]

I found a decent way to mount it on my dash. It involved using those suction cups (the kind with a permanent base). You can use those gps mounts for parts, and i believe the screw to mount the camera.

[xxxLoLexxx]

samsung MX20 has a time laps feature on it, makes it increadibly easy, just a side note

[Cambreath]

awesome.

[CanadienAtheist]

Bloody awesome tips. And I already have that netbook, I shall have to try this

[sidewinderguy]

Thx for the info! Isn't technology wonderful?

[gtssage]

Cool. Allphaville big in japan

[WOLFNBEAST]

what's the web cam controller software called

[birkett83]

You don't need to re-render your video to add music to it; your video editing software should be able to add audio to an existing video stream.

[Teenagefreedomfightr]

You have a lot of taste in electronics, even on the more economic choices they are smart. I wish I could say the same for your automotive taste lol.

[BlahBlable]

epic telescope!!!

[Dgc2003]

YES ramen noodles YES!

I've been living off those for about a year :) Good ol' college life

[jarjarbinks77]

Its hard to tell for sure on the video, but it looks like you need new tires.

[methinxaweezil]

Ant bully!

[bamboo4tameshigiri]

Top Ramen is an easy way to live on the cheap. I've done that a few times myself.

[yellowlabrador]

every day i learn a little bit from you, thanks for taking me on holiday

[werterr3]

Using similar setup with Linux, using command line interface in a minimalistic environment, this extends your battery life up a lot because the notebook is doing much less useless gui stuff.

Then using Mencoder to create a movie from all the individual files, you can also do this in real time but i prefer to save the images to disk.

Such a setup can use completely free software and can deal with insane amounts of frames. We time lapsed a camp site 1f/s running for 2 weeks without problems.

[GruntyAssassin2]

Fuck yes! An Asus EEE PC!

[spyderwalk]

Woot!!! Thanks for this!

[Arfaer]

VirtualDubMod can handle image sequences. I've never tried 40k, but you should try it. It is free and it can compress to any codec installed in the system.

[legalizemarijuananos]

u carrying all that expensive gear in your car. i hope your packing a gun too. someone tries to jack tfoot, u pop a cap in their ass.

know what im saying. u da man.

[Dryndal]

I'm thinking about buying a netbook too... But an MSI Wind U100...

Nice setup Tf00t :)

[TheDigitalRace]

hehe ramen

ummm...whats the name of the song? anyone?

[Buster557]

Alphaville-Big in Japan

[ExeFBM]

The song is 'Big in Japan' by 'Alphaville'.

'Guano Apes' also did an awesome heavy rock cover of it.

[TheDigitalRace]

thnx fellow youtubers

[FratisNox]

Thank you might hav to start timelapses of my own

[bherkert]

hehe nice music

[IdleGod]

Fantastic. But you need to remove some of that spyware from your machine. Why exactly was that toolbar popping up every few seconds?

[ZeroSerraSerenity]

That's actualy Logitech's camera controls.

[IdleGod]

Ouch. Reminds me of why I ditched windows so long ago... Oh well, to each their own.

[ReclusiarchGrimaldus]

I'm pretty sure his toolbar was hidden. The reason it kept popping up was probably due to the program that was receiving the frames from the camera was updating, or something like that.

Ahh, who cares anyways? :P

[niqueth]

And if you have footage you already shot in real time, you can use time compression to get the same effect. It is not as efficient memory wise, but it is useful when all you have is a mini DV cam and no laptop.

[katey1dog]

NERD PORN!

[Secularium]

Very nice, I have a computer like that, they're great. Keep the good work up Thunderf00t.

[xqyzii]

this stuff is so amazing. I've got to do something like that, too someday.

[PrjChris]

I kind of wish I would've gotten the black eee pc instead of the white one but im still happy with it :)

[coryy650]

nice stuff^^

[geffel]

I recently downloaded a timelapse app for my i-phone. Not as broadly capable as TF00t's setup, but it does the job.

[SucculentJuniper]

Top Ramen!

[EmilyTheGreat80]

that was one sexy video.

[TheNewDanSoup]

I'll have to check out that program.

Also, WTF is up with Big in Japan? I heard it for the first time in a pub with someone doing karaoke, then on the radio, now in a Thunderf00t video, how can I not have heard this song before and heard it so much recently? :S

[geffel]

That's how it goes. It's one of those odd little quirks of life!

[jalgjalg]

I so can't wait till anyone invents a battery that will feed my laptop for at least a full day use without having to recharge... or portable solar cells that could do the job, whatever...

[TheReasonWhyGuy]

I SEE RAMEN NOODLES!!! XD

[invisibletime]

cool i will try it

[metainfinity]

What's the song?

[Zed1967]

Made in Japan by Alphaville.

[freezatron]

he needs a motor home !

[markio44]

Thanks TF.

How many packs of Top Ramen noodles do you eat a day?

[CousinoMacul]

I wanted to take a time lapse movie of the tide change the last time I was up in Maine. The problem was that I had no good way to get evenly spaced photos with either my digital cam or cam-corder, and my laptop battery wouldn't hold out for the span of the tide change. I'll have to come up with a work-around next time I head up there.

I use VirtualDub. It's free, open-source, and can stitch pics together into a movie.

[Shemassault]

did I just hear a fart at 0:24 ? :D

[SCHBLRTZ]

this fart's for science!

[Shemassault]

completely approvable

[MrDJLaw]

hahahahaha

[EternoImperio]

Poor ants :( lol

[dudejohnny]

1500$ digital camera... Oh snizzap!

[Sarge084]

How timely, I spent today looking for freeware to do time lapse with a webcam, and you come along with a tutorial.

Top man!

[joeofgore]

Your timelapse results have been great. So is your how to guide. Although borrowed, the palomar mirror timelapse showed how useful it is. Cool.

[TheAtheistSwede]

You can't go wrong with Alphaville. =)

Very nice and informative video.

[ludersatan]

but this video has nothing to do with Bigfoot???

[sp4zzer]

I've tried similar setup when riding MC, but it doesnt work to well, simply because you keep leaning over, so every 4th fram or so is tilted 30 degrees one way or the other.. Cinsidering setting up something like filmin 3 seconds every 30 or something..

[sdpgposd]

i wrote you a message a few days ago, this is more of an answer than i was expecting :D

[sdpgposd]

very interesting thanks

[MunsterAtheist]

Thanks for the info. TF. Now how about answering my Venus question for extra kudos points? :-)

[alosel2]

How interesting. I pressume it takes ages to actually make each timelapse movie with so many pictures (you mentioned up to 100k at a time.)

[TheMysteriousCorner]

Man, when I get the means, I am SO going to time lapse a trip I take now.

[sp4zzer]

Well.. If you actually use a camera with a plastic shutter for timelapse.. it wont last.. Magnesium ftw ;)

[tomiontomion]

Thank you very much

[yakovgolyadkin]

That's a beautiful SLR. I got a Nikon D5000 today. :)

[alx90x]

great advice, ive wanted 2 get into this 4 a long time, but wicked expensive

[jus10ls]

Nice!

[HiGlossWebDesign]

Great guide, thanks.

[Torsaaa]

Coool

[Hjernespreng]

naiz