Stitching 7000 jpegs into one video file?

November 6, 2006 9:42 AM

So I took 7000 pictures (jpeg) with my webcam over a period of 12 hours. How do I stitch them together into a time-lapse video?

I've tried searching AskMefi, but haven't had any luck. This thread gives a number of suggestions, but none of them seem to fit my problem. This program would probably be able to do it, but there doesn't seem to be a download link on the webpage.

posted by bering to Computers & Internet (20 answers total)

Lots of programs can do it. I might use After Effects. What software do you have access to?
posted by idledebonair at 9:45 AM on November 6, 2006

Response by poster: Well, none really. I would prefer to find some free software if it's possible. But if all else fails, I would be willing to invest :-)
posted by bering at 9:47 AM on November 6, 2006

If you have XP then Windows Movie Maker (bundled) will do this. Drag and drop the jpg's, very easy.
posted by fire&wings at 10:16 AM on November 6, 2006

FYI, if you do use movie maker, be sure to change the default image time length, from 5 to, say, 0.25 ish.

It's under the program options in the third or fourth menu from the left (the name changes depending on the version used).
posted by niles at 10:43 AM on November 6, 2006

Response by poster: I should have mentioned that I'm on Windows XP. The first thing I tried was Movie Maker, but to say that it choked on 7000 pictures would be an understatement - it nearly exploded... I going to try and import the pictures in smaller batches... patience...
posted by bering at 11:14 AM on November 6, 2006

I would just give it the images, and come back tomorrow.

Seriously. It might seem like a long time, but it'll be faster than doing it in groups by hand.
posted by niles at 11:20 AM on November 6, 2006

QuickTime Pro can do this.
posted by drstein at 11:27 AM on November 6, 2006

Your proclivity for chocking up Movie Maker's going to change depending on what quality your JPGs are at. Did you leave them in n memory-intensive original 9.2MP 5 meg format which can cause any program to explode with 7000 pics, or reduce them to a manageable 100k format (the photo-editing software from HP that came with my printer will change a whole batch's quality at once)?
Either way, I suspect your computer will likely to halt to a grind regardless of what kind of software you use & I second niles' advice.
posted by jmd82 at 11:34 AM on November 6, 2006

If you're on a Mac, Gawker can record a time lapse movie from your webcam directly, but I don't think it can do anything with the jpegs you have now.
posted by teg at 12:18 PM on November 6, 2006

Response by poster: Ok, I'll try to be patient with Movie Maker. The pictures are 7 kb each, so it might be possible :-)
posted by bering at 12:21 PM on November 6, 2006

Best answer: The jpgvideo download link is here. (What a truly hideous web site.)

I would personally use ffmpeg. It's free and there are binaries available for any platform, including windows. It can convert to and from almost any video format, including individual frame images. It is a command line tool, but there are also GUI front-ends out there (which you can find through google.)
posted by Rhomboid at 1:30 PM on November 6, 2006

mencoder.

Windows GUI frontend for mencoder.

All free, all good.
posted by flabdablet at 2:42 PM on November 6, 2006

I like VirtualDub for converting image sequences to movies and vice versa in Windows. It's been plenty fast for my purposes, even with long sequences of large images.
posted by yarmond at 5:07 PM on November 6, 2006

2nding, as always, mencoder. used it to do exactly what you are asking for many times.
posted by joeblough at 5:53 PM on November 6, 2006

PhotoLapse
posted by Akeem at 3:42 AM on November 7, 2006

VirtualDubMod will open a series of (numbered) JPEGs for you to save to an AVI with the CODEC of your choice. Then, out of that, you can make an WMV (with Windows Media Encoder) or MPEG (with TMPEGEnc).

All of these are free.
posted by ostranenie at 11:19 AM on November 7, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks everybody. I took the easy way out and used jpgvideo from Rhomboid's link (Rhomboid: how did you find it?). I added music by using VirtualDub. The result is here, too bad Youtube messes up the quality.
posted by bering at 11:58 AM on November 7, 2006

By the way the frontend Windows GUI for mencoder mentioned above is called SUPER, and it absolutely rocks. SUPER will convert damn near anything to damn near anything else (using ffmpeg, mencoder, various other encoding/decoding programs). I use it to convert movies from my wife's Sony mobile phone to MPEG files, among other things. And it's free $-)

(This is 2006, people. Are you still using command lines other than when it's absolutely necessary?)
posted by ostranenie at 12:17 PM on November 7, 2006

Rhomboid: how did you find it?

I clicked on "Web Site" in the left-hand nav column which goes to the root of the site, and from there under "Freeware" are download links for the various apps.
posted by Rhomboid at 1:18 PM on November 7, 2006

Response by poster: Shameless self-promotion: result can be seen here on Google Video.
posted by bering at 7:09 AM on January 15, 2007