The time-lapse video tab page is the more complicated looking page and mainly due to having added features over time. Time-lapse video is made from a sequence of jpeg images. The software uses mEncoder and ffmpeg to make the time-lapse video. The completed time-lapse video can besent to an FTP server using the same FTP settings set on the Schedule & FTP tab page used for uploading jpeg image captures. There are two basic time-lapse options: full day and intraday. The intraday allows you to make a video during the day so that you can keep a current up to the hour timelapse always available. The timelapse can be made automatically by checking one of the make video checkboxes under Daily Time-Lapse. Intraday time-lapse can also be made automatically during the day by selecting those checkboxes under the Intraday Time-Lapse block. To test the settings you can click the Make Video Now or Make Intraday Video Now buttons.
Source Images Folder
Enter the source folder for your images.
Video Destination Folder
Enter the destination folder for your resulting timelapse video.
Make Video Now button
Click to make a video now using the current settings. Video will be uploaded via FTP if the Upload Video checkbox is set.
Make Intraday Video Now button
Click to make an Intraday video now using the current settings. Video will be uploaded via FTP if the Upload Video checkbox is set.
Set up processing block
The 5 process option buttons are self descriptive.
Include subfolders checkbox
Set this checkbox to tell the software to look one folder deep within the source images folder.
Allow >1 subfolder
Set this checkbox to tell the software to look greater than one folder deep within the source images folder.
Use a user defined image list
Normally unchecked this box will let you define your own image list.
Video run time (sec) checkbox
Check this box to force the video playback time to be the number of seconds specified. If there are a very large number of images to process this option can be very usful as it will
tell the software to adjust the image sample rate and frame rate to accomodte the playback time requested. If you use this setting the Process Every setting and Frames/Sec setting
will be overridden.
Video run time fps min and fps max
If there are not enough images available to produce a playback time requested using the Video Run-time checkbox the frames/sec setting will use the lower limit specified. The fps max setting puts a stop on the maximum frames/sec allowed and will then revert to subsampling the image set to accomodate the playback time selected.
Process every N images
Use this setting to subsample the images set using the number chosen. For instance if there are 100,000 images in the image set setting Process Every to 2 will skip every other image and produce a video from 50,000 images.
Num Colums
Set the number of pixel columns in the output timelapse video. It is recommended for timelapse video for upload that the number of columns and rows be in the range of 700 to keep the file size small.
Num Rows
Set the number of pixel rows in the output timelapse video
Video Size help block
Use this block to quickly set a video size based on a fraction of the input image size.
Aspect helper block
Optionally set the video output aspect Num Rows setting based on Num Columns and desired aspect.
Encoding Block
Frames/sec
Set the desired frames/sec for playback. Nominal is 30.
CRF, quality
Applies to mp4 container only. A good quality factor is 2.
Bit Rate
Applies to non-mp4 videos. Affects the output video quality.
Encoding Speed
Applies to mp4 videos only. Lower values will quickly produce a video but with larger size and lower quality. Larger values the inverse.
Time-lapse start/end dates, time block
Start date
Active when radio button Process Images over a date range
is selected.
Make video Start & End time
Sets the time range to make a video.
Use only one image from each day using Start time checkbox Select this checkbox to make a video using one image from each day. Usfull when you have say 1 years of images. You
can make a timelapse video showing progress from each day. If you want to select one image from each day at 12 noon then check this box and set the Make video Start & End time to 12:00
Valid days checkboxes
Select the days of the week for making a video. For instance, if you have images from every day of the week but you only want to make a video from working days M-F then select the checkboxes accordingly.
Use Sunrise/Sunset as Start/Stop time based on Lat/Long checkbox Select this checkbox to use the lat Long settings from which sunrise and sunset will be derived for each day of the year. The creation date of each image is tested against the sunrise/sunset time and if it is within that time it will become part of the timelapse video. This is usfull if you have collected imaegs over a 24 hour period but only want to produce the timelapse over daylight hours.
Start Bias, Stop Bias checkboxes
Use these bias settings to offset the sunrise/sunset times.
Verify button
Press this button to test the sunrise/sunset time for the lat/long settings. The bias settings are not applied to the verify reading.
Video FTP Upload and Save Options block
The FTP for timelapse video upload is the same FTP setting used for images upload set on the Schedule & FTP tab page.
Upload Video FTP
After the timelapse video file is produced it will be uploaded if this checkbox is selected.
Archive Video (local)
A copy of the timelapse video will be saved on the destination folder having yyyymmddhhmmss format name
Delete Archived Videos Older than N days
Check this box and set the number of days to keep archive videos.
Keep a weeks log of images having weekday names (on server only) checkbox Check this box to upload a copy of the timelapse video (when FTP upload is selected) and give it a name based on the day of the week.
