You can't with MiniDV - not easily, at least. They don't have single-frame
record & advance.

Your best bet is to find a cheap* Nikon** DSC and a cheap* PC, and control
the former using the latter (running Krinnikam) and a USB cable. Depending
on the selected image resolution, you can set the timelapse as low as 1.5
seconds.

Then you bring your list of frames into your favourite mid-range editor
(Windows Movie Maker won't quite hack it, here) and equate one image to one
frame.

If you bring the frames in at their native size (as opposed to automatically
resizing them to fit the video frame) it allows you to do some cool effects
like panning and zooming around the stop motion

Take a look at:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gareth.hardy1/Clouds.wmv (1.7MB)
It's just a concept test, but it should give you the idea. It was done using
a £100 eBay laptop and a Nikon CoolPix 5700 - bought new, but they currently
appear to be going for about £100-135 on eBay.
So you can get a better result than DV for a quarter of your budget.

Note - you'll get a better result if you save to media card rather than PC,
so work out your resolution, shooting rate and card size appropriately so
you 75% fill the card with a day's shooting, then download all the images at
the end of the day.
Note also - if you plan to shoot a frame every two minutes or more, you can
get an electronic remote shutter that will bypass the need for a PC/laptop
to be running alongside the camera. That's for the 5700 - you might be able
to get a higher shooting frequency if there's an electronic remote for your
own camera.

* Cheap - means that you're less distraught when they get nicked during
timelapse photography.
** Any make will do, but you'll have to search for the appropriate control
software and use the appropriate cabling. For example, the Fuji S2 Pro and
up come with all the cables and software you need for this very task - you
just need a firewire port available.



"Tx2" wrote in message
T...

we have a massive new building development going into our college, and i
would like to film it in timelapse.

I am thus looking for a MiniDV camera that will allow me to achieve this
with simplicity and at relatively low cost (sub £1000)

Any ideas?


--
My reply address is valid, but incoming mail is set to 'auto-delete'
so will not be seen. Please post replies to the group.
XPS M1710 / 2.16 GHz dual core / 2Gb DDR2 / nVidia GeForce 7950GTX

What's a "DSC" camera please?

Digital Stills Camera.

I forgot to say - you _can_ just record an hour or 90mins of DV and then
speed it up in your editing software, but that will rewuire you to change
the tapes 6-8 times in your camera - and not move it while the change is
taking place! With 130GB of HDD free you can record 10 hours direct to PC
and speed it up the same way. You'll probably have to speed up to your
timelapse file, then delete the capture, on a daily basis.


...Where can i find "Krinnikam" also?

via http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/krinnicam/ but bear in mind - it's
for Nikon cameras only. You'll need to find an equivalent for Panasonic
FZ20.

So - if i can try to understand what you are saying - is to shoot using
stills (I have a Panasonic FZ20 FWIW) and simply add the stills together
to make a continuous 'film' rather than actual video?

Exactly right. It looks like your camera has timelapse capabilites built-in,
but I can only find the dutch manual so I'm not sure how you do it.


I have the right software to do this (patch all the stills together), in
fact i have a selection, from Avid Xpress down to Premiere Elements, so
that won't be an issue.

You can do it with all sorts of freeware. I'm sure you can concatenate
images together using VirtualDub (although I don't know the syntax).

When I was doing it (using MediaStudio Pro) I created a colour clip the same
dimensions as my still image, then stretched it on the timeline and saved it
as a image sequence to match the number of frames shot by the camera. Then,
I just replaced the JPEGs created by the editor with the ones I'd shot with
the camera. Took about 30 seconds to turn a long list of stills into a
"video file".


other advice:
Get the camera on a tripod and don't touch it while it's shooting.
By all means change position at lunchtime or from one day to the next, to
make the edit more interesting. Note that an eight-hour day with a picture
shot every two seconds will last 9m36s (PAL)
Don't bother trying to fix a constant manual exposure unless you're
shooting more than once every five seconds - the conditions during the day
will change enough to make it "flicker" anyway, you might as well let the
camera decide what's best.

On Tue, 15 May 2007 22:57:06 GMT, "G Hardy"
wrote:

You can do it with all sorts of freeware. I'm sure you can concatenate
images together using VirtualDub (although I don't know the syntax).

Yep - VirtualDub will allow you to load a directory of sequentially
numbered images (JPEG or BMP) and convert them to an AVI, optionally
recompressing the video content to make it a more manageable size.

From the VDub menu, go File - Open, then choose
"Files of type" and select Image Sequence.

Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2007
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

G Hardy wrote:
|| You can't with MiniDV - not easily, at least. They don't have
|| single-frame record & advance.
||
|| Your best bet is to find a cheap* Nikon** DSC and a cheap* PC, and
|| control the former using the latter (running Krinnikam) and a USB
|| cable. Depending on the selected image resolution, you can set the
|| timelapse as low as 1.5 seconds.
||
|| Then you bring your list of frames into your favourite mid-range
|| editor (Windows Movie Maker won't quite hack it, here) and equate
|| one image to one frame.
||
|| If you bring the frames in at their native size (as opposed to
|| automatically resizing them to fit the video frame) it allows you to
|| do some cool effects like panning and zooming around the stop motion
||
|| Take a look at:
|| http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gareth.hardy1/Clouds.wmv (1.7MB)
|| It's just a concept test, but it should give you the idea. It was
|| done using a £100 eBay laptop and a Nikon CoolPix 5700 - bought new,
|| but they currently appear to be going for about £100-135 on eBay.
|| So you can get a better result than DV for a quarter of your budget.
||

I hope you don't mind me asking some questions in a similar vein, but a
really interesting topic, with what looks like some useful advice.
I've got a cheap security camera (composite video output ) modulated on to a
spare channel through a distribution amplifier feeding several TVs.
At one time I had the idea of using a PVR detector to switch a VCR on/off in
EP mode for a set time period.

Unfortunately due to illness I never got around to it, but now that
computers with quite powerful processors are being dumped in landfills, and
even 500 gigabyte hard drives are ridiculously cheap, it would appear to be
a much better option than using a VCR.

Is there any simple software available whereby a camera with composite
video output combined with a TV card can be made to capture individual
frames onto a hard drive with a reasonable image resolution, and for user
predetermined time intervals?.

Also I've wondered about flash memory, as I see that a four gigabyte SD card
can be purchased for as little as £20, how many medium- resolution images
could be stored on one of those?

If any of these options were feasible it would give me something to play
around with, as nowadays I have a bit more spare time on my hand ) TIA
Ivan





|||| My reply address is valid, but incoming mail is set to 'auto-delete'
|| so will not be seen. Please post replies to the group.
|| XPS M1710 / 2.16 GHz dual core / 2Gb DDR2 / nVidia GeForce 7950GTX

"Ivan" wrote in message
...
G Hardy wrote:
|| You can't with MiniDV - not easily, at least. They don't have
|| single-frame record & advance.
||
|| Your best bet is to find a cheap* Nikon** DSC and a cheap* PC, and
|| control the former using the latter (running Krinnikam) and a USB
|| cable. Depending on the selected image resolution, you can set the
|| timelapse as low as 1.5 seconds.
||
|| Then you bring your list of frames into your favourite mid-range
|| editor (Windows Movie Maker won't quite hack it, here) and equate
|| one image to one frame.
||
|| If you bring the frames in at their native size (as opposed to
|| automatically resizing them to fit the video frame) it allows you to
|| do some cool effects like panning and zooming around the stop motion
||
|| Take a look at:
|| http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gareth.hardy1/Clouds.wmv (1.7MB)
|| It's just a concept test, but it should give you the idea. It was
|| done using a £100 eBay laptop and a Nikon CoolPix 5700 - bought new,
|| but they currently appear to be going for about £100-135 on eBay.
|| So you can get a better result than DV for a quarter of your budget.
||

I hope you don't mind me asking some questions in a similar vein, but a
really interesting topic, with what looks like some useful advice.
I've got a cheap security camera (composite video output ) modulated on to
a
spare channel through a distribution amplifier feeding several TVs.
At one time I had the idea of using a PVR detector to switch a VCR on/off
in
EP mode for a set time period.

Unfortunately due to illness I never got around to it, but now that
computers with quite powerful processors are being dumped in landfills,
and
even 500 gigabyte hard drives are ridiculously cheap, it would appear to
be
a much better option than using a VCR.

Is there any simple software available whereby a camera with composite
video output combined with a TV card can be made to capture individual
frames onto a hard drive with a reasonable image resolution, and for user
predetermined time intervals?.


Snag it, Cam studio at screen res Thay are screen capture software

Also I've wondered about flash memory, as I see that a four gigabyte SD
card
can be purchased for as little as £20, how many medium- resolution images
could be stored on one of those?

at 640 x 480 my Fuji s9600 says 60 mins at 25 fps
or in stills at 9mp aprox 4.5 MB per image 900 images


If any of these options were feasible it would give me something to play
around with, as nowadays I have a bit more spare time on my hand ) TIA
Ivan





|||| My reply address is valid, but incoming mail is set to 'auto-delete'
|| so will not be seen. Please post replies to the group.
|| XPS M1710 / 2.16 GHz dual core / 2Gb DDR2 / nVidia GeForce 7950GTX

Trev wrote:
|| "Ivan" wrote in message
|| ...
||| G Hardy wrote:
||||| You can't with MiniDV - not easily, at least. They don't have
||||| single-frame record & advance.
|||||
||||| Your best bet is to find a cheap* Nikon** DSC and a cheap* PC, and
||||| control the former using the latter (running Krinnikam) and a USB
||||| cable. Depending on the selected image resolution, you can set the
||||| timelapse as low as 1.5 seconds.
|||||
||||| Then you bring your list of frames into your favourite mid-range
||||| editor (Windows Movie Maker won't quite hack it, here) and equate
||||| one image to one frame.
|||||
||||| If you bring the frames in at their native size (as opposed to
||||| automatically resizing them to fit the video frame) it allows you
||||| to do some cool effects like panning and zooming around the stop
||||| motion
|||||
||||| Take a look at:
||||| http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gareth.hardy1/Clouds.wmv (1.7MB)
||||| It's just a concept test, but it should give you the idea. It was
||||| done using a £100 eBay laptop and a Nikon CoolPix 5700 - bought
||||| new, but they currently appear to be going for about £100-135 on
||||| eBay. So you can get a better result than DV for a quarter of
||||| your budget.
|||||
|||
||| I hope you don't mind me asking some questions in a similar vein,
||| but a really interesting topic, with what looks like some useful
||| advice.
||| I've got a cheap security camera (composite video output )
||| modulated on to a
||| spare channel through a distribution amplifier feeding several TVs.
||| At one time I had the idea of using a PVR detector to switch a VCR
||| on/off in
||| EP mode for a set time period.
|||
||| Unfortunately due to illness I never got around to it, but now that
||| computers with quite powerful processors are being dumped in
||| landfills, and
||| even 500 gigabyte hard drives are ridiculously cheap, it would
||| appear to be
||| a much better option than using a VCR.
|||
||| Is there any simple software available whereby a camera with
||| composite video output combined with a TV card can be made to
||| capture individual frames onto a hard drive with a reasonable image
||| resolution, and for user predetermined time intervals?.
||
||
|| Snag it, Cam studio at screen res Thay are screen capture software
|||

Thanks, I'll read through its many features, but at first glance it looks a
little bit like overkill for the kind of thing I had in mind.



||| Also I've wondered about flash memory, as I see that a four
||| gigabyte SD card
||| can be purchased for as little as £20, how many medium- resolution
||| images could be stored on one of those?
||
|| at 640 x 480 my Fuji s9600 says 60 mins at 25 fps
|| or in stills at 9mp aprox 4.5 MB per image 900 images
||


Again a 4.5 MB image appears to be way above the sort of resolution I would
be looking at for a basic security set up.
I have an old Olympus 1.3 mega pixel camera and even some of the lower
resolution pictures of around 300K are pin-sharp on a 15 inch monitor, and
can even be blown up to a level which I 'assume' would be adequate for my
intended basic domestic security purposes.

|||
||| If any of these options were feasible it would give me something to
||| play around with, as nowadays I have a bit more spare time on my
||| hand ) TIA Ivan
|||
|||
|||
|||
|||
||||||| My reply address is valid, but incoming mail is set to
||||||| 'auto-delete'
||||| so will not be seen. Please post replies to the group.
||||| XPS M1710 / 2.16 GHz dual core / 2Gb DDR2 / nVidia GeForce 7950GTX

"Ivan" wrote in message
...
Trev wrote:
|| "Ivan" wrote in message
|| ...
||| G Hardy wrote:
some sniping


||| Also I've wondered about flash memory, as I see that a four
||| gigabyte SD card
||| can be purchased for as little as £20, how many medium- resolution
||| images could be stored on one of those?
||
|| at 640 x 480 my Fuji s9600 says 60 mins at 25 fps
|| or in stills at 9mp aprox 4.5 MB per image 900 images
||


Again a 4.5 MB image appears to be way above the sort of resolution I
would
be looking at for a basic security set up.
I have an old Olympus 1.3 mega pixel camera and even some of the lower
resolution pictures of around 300K are pin-sharp on a 15 inch monitor, and
can even be blown up to a level which I 'assume' would be adequate for my
intended basic domestic security purposes.

Well thats to dmonstrat the capicity of the card lower res such as 640 x
480 at 130k will hold over 500 images on it

"G Hardy" wrote in message
...

Don't bother trying to fix a constant manual exposure unless you're
shooting more than once every five seconds - the conditions during the day
will change enough to make it "flicker" anyway, you might as well let the
camera decide what's best.

I've tried time lapse photography using the built-in timer on my Minolta A1
camera, but consistance of exposure is a real problem: the resulting video
flickers a lot, which is very distracting. Ideally you want the same object
to keep a roughly constant brightness in the phot as the lighting changes
(eg as a cloud goes across the sun or the sun sets).

I've noticed that professional timelapse videos don't flicker as much. What
do they do - do they have software which post-processes each frame in an
attempt to compensate for gross changes in exposure as the lighting changes?

"Mortimer" wrote in message
...

I've noticed that professional timelapse videos don't flicker as much.
What do they do - do they have software which post-processes each frame in
an attempt to compensate for gross changes in exposure as the lighting
changes?

You can't get rid of flicker without a lot of work. Lighting conditions
change during the day so you can use the auto exposure feature of the camera
to minimise the effect, but then you regionalise the flicker. For example,
if you capture clouds rolling over a castle, you'll get exposure variations
on the brickwork depending on (say) the thickness off the clouds. If you
bracket the exposures over a small area - just the brickwork, the brightness
of the clouds will change.