How do I make time-lapse video more watchable?
May 22, 2022 6:24 PM Subscribe
I have a video which I didn't know was taken as a time-lapse. Other than adding "Yakkety Sax" and embracing the lunacy, what video-editing tricks will make this more enjoyable to watch?
Would something like moving every frame to a half-second or a full second display make this more like a fast slideshow, or is that too long?
I took the video on a "clone" action cam (Campark A68). I am not sure of the speed: it's about two minutes of video taken over maybe half an hour.
I am comfortable using ffmpg on my Mac, and indeed have already tried playing with it (e.g., to export every frame as a PNG image). I think I also have Premiere laying around here, and iMovie.
I will end up exporting every frame with ffmpeg, them importing them into a whole new movie (again with ffmpeg), right?
Would something like moving every frame to a half-second or a full second display make this more like a fast slideshow, or is that too long?
I took the video on a "clone" action cam (Campark A68). I am not sure of the speed: it's about two minutes of video taken over maybe half an hour.
I am comfortable using ffmpg on my Mac, and indeed have already tried playing with it (e.g., to export every frame as a PNG image). I think I also have Premiere laying around here, and iMovie.
I will end up exporting every frame with ffmpeg, them importing them into a whole new movie (again with ffmpeg), right?
Response by poster: It's vacation footage of snorkeling and the beach, from a place I will never visit again. Naturally.
So I would be OK with being able to see the frames as stills, because most of them are neat underwater views.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:58 PM on May 22, 2022
So I would be OK with being able to see the frames as stills, because most of them are neat underwater views.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:58 PM on May 22, 2022
This looks like the relevant ffmpeg documentation: Speeding up or slowing down video
posted by Monochrome at 7:54 PM on May 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Monochrome at 7:54 PM on May 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
Add soothing music?
posted by whitelotus at 8:13 PM on May 22, 2022
posted by whitelotus at 8:13 PM on May 22, 2022
I’d try displaying each frame for a second and cross-fading.
posted by mumkin at 9:22 PM on May 22, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by mumkin at 9:22 PM on May 22, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm not in the art-film world, but I've lived with a curator and helped with very low-level production and compositing stuff. One possible idea would be to make a 2X2 grid of images in which each one changes randomly on a 4 second timescale, so the audience always has both something they can choose to keep looking at and something new to look at and they never know where the new one will be. A soundtrack that is mostly appropriate and very occasionally surprising couldn't hurt. (I think the usual experimental-film approach would probably to show them either much faster or much slower than seems like it could possibly be reasonable, as a response to the wedding-slideshow format.) But, your audience may be very different.
posted by eotvos at 5:16 AM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by eotvos at 5:16 AM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Other than adding "Yakkety Sax"
You answered your own question.
posted by bondcliff at 6:09 AM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
You answered your own question.
posted by bondcliff at 6:09 AM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by mekily at 6:31 PM on May 22, 2022