Time Lapse: Durango CO to Silver City NM in 1800 mph Toyota Corolla

Part one of three of a 30:1 time-lapse of a drive from Fort Lewis College in Durango CO to Silver City NM. Equivalent speed in the 49 mpg Toyota Corolla is in the 1000 -- 2100 mph range. Soundtrack courtesy Craig Russell from the "Bamboo Tales" album, available on Amazon

How I did it:

(This video would not be possible without the patient help from the people at forum.videohelp.com, and the inspiration from Drew (http://www.youtube.com/user/Dblitz70) )

The camera is suspended upside-down from the passenger seat visor using two woodworking clamps and an Adorama c-clamp mount. I brace the whole silly thing with a Leki spring-loaded hiking pole, some high-density foam and some duct-tape.

The HDR-CX550V does not have a time-lapse mode, so I just shoot the whole thing in 1440x1080i 9mbps mode (HD-HQ on the camera menu). I render them for YT in 1280x720p mode. Quality is always lost after YT processes the video, and is particularly annoying for high-motion driving time lapse. This is a YT limitation, and I can't complain much -- YT is "free". But, you should see the video on my home computer -- stunningly crisp and focused! The camera can hold at least 64 GB of video, which is enough for about 20 hours at that quality setting. I stop every once in a while to check the camera, clean the windshield, etc. Each AVCHD clip is in the 1-6 GB range.

After getting the video into my computer, I go through multi-phase processing steps, working with Sony Vegas Pro 64-bit, HuffYUV x64 lossless AVI encoder and VirtualDub x64 V 1.9.9 (http://www.virtualdub.org/index)

* With Sony Vegas Pro , rotate each clip so it is right-side up (because the camera was hanging upside-down) and level it exactly using the Vegas pan-crop tool. Do a little clean-up, trim the vid, etc.
* Render an intermediate clip to .avi with the HuffYUV x64 encoder (In Vegas, choose Save As Video for Windows (*.avi), Custom to pick Huffyuv. (Note: You must have the x64 version of Huffyuv to see the codec option in x64 Vegas Pro). Even with the Huffyuv encoder the intermediate clips will be huge; I had to buy a 1 TB Seagate external USB drive to hold them.)
* Use VirtualDub to "decimate" the .avi clips. This means throw away frames while keeping the final frame rate at 29.970 fps. In veedub64.exe, use Video/FrameRate/ChangeFrameRate to (29.970x30), and then decimate by 30 to get a 30:1 speed increase. This produces a result that is the same as shooting one frame per second during the drive.

I've found that decimating with VirtualDub produces a better effect for driving time-lapse than the tedious multi-pass compression with Vegas. Vegas limits you to 12:1 max per pass, and introduces motion-blur. Motion Blur is OK (actually better) for cloud time-lapse and other things where you want high-speed motion to blur, but for driving vids it just blurs everything so much the final result is unwatchable for any compression ratios higher than 10:1.

*Take each decimated clip and import it into the final project.
* Produce the "moving map" insets using Google Earth Plug-in Driving Simulator (http://earth-api-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/demos/drive-simulator/index.h­tml) Capture the simulator runs with CamStudio (http://camstudio.org/)
* Using multiple tracks, pan/crop, and all the various Vegas features, build the final project, with music, text and the moving-map inserts. This is VERY time-consuming, particularly synchronizing the moving map sections to the actual driving video. I look for landmarks, turns, bridges etc. and split the map clips and then stretch/compress each section until they match up with the driving video. I find it handy to overlay a fade of the map clip on top of the driving vid until I get it right, then use pan-crop to shrink the map and move it to the upper right.
* Do the final render for the YT upload.
* Upload to YT using the Advanced Java Upload tool, which is nice because it can recover from network problems.
* Curse at YT for downsampling the final product to lower quality than what I see on the screen!
*Done!

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Runaway
• Toyota
• Corolla
• 1800
• mph
• Durango
• Co
• Silver
• City
• NM
• Sony
• Vegas
• Pro
• Farmington
• Reserve
• Aztec
• Fort
• Lewis
• College
• time-lapse
• driving
• VirtualDub
• huffyuv
• decimate
• fly
• under
• radar
• ground
• HDR-CS550v

[goatman069]

I've made the trip between Farmington and Silver City a hundred times, at least. 371 south from Farmington, the jog over east of Grants and go south on 53 to 180. Faster, less miles! Cool video!

[stevecrye]

@goatman069 Thanks, I know that way. I considered it but kind of wanted to go the way I went in the vid, because I had not driven it for a while. Also, that stretch you mentioned is was bumpy last year. I hope they re-pave it. Thanks for watching!

[Halunlimited]

Great video. Very nice of you to share your learning and techniques. thank you.

[stevecrye]

@Halunlimited Thanks, I'm a big believer in not just reading the web, but also sharing knowledge. Each of us knows something that will help others, and the Web is the best invention in the history of Mankind for sharing what we know with the world. BTW I'm still working on part 3 of the drive, but have been sidetracked by other projects. Please stand by!

[CptSchmidt]

I see you don't subscribe to keeping right...

[stevecrye]

@CptSchmidt I misunderstood your criticism when I first responded. I was distracted by the camera thing and was terribly guilty of staying in the left-hand lane, even though I was not going very fast. Rest assured I don't normally screw-up like that!

[stevecrye]

@CptSchmidt Heh - very observant! On an empty road, I like to use all of it - habits from my mis-spent youth in AK.

[stevecrye]

@HassanAlHajry I have two, one the stock one that came with the camera, but I also bought an NPV-100 - huge capacity, runs the camera for about 6 hours. However, you can also get a car adapter for about $40.00 on Amazon. I have one now ... for the Durango vid I ran out of battery power . Stand by for Part 3 sometime next week!

[HassanAlHajry]

I have one question, how does your camcorder battery last that long? o.o

[coronadopballer]

@stevecrye very nice. maybe put some wings on the side and just go airborne next time!