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Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

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Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#11
I'd recommend Da Vinci Resolve for making timelapses. It performs really well and let's you scrub through before rendering anything which lets you clip just the part that you need. Plus you get the benefit of high export quality which can be fiddly with ffmpeg.

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#12
post #7
post #2

ffmpeg is such a great tool! Be aware that -pattern_type glob is not supported on Windows, though, iirc. A workaround is to name your jpegs with consecutive numbers (not necessarily starting at 0) and use a pattern with a counter placeholder in it instead.

Also be aware of this infamous “bug” > The sortedness of glob.glob's output is platform-dependent. https://bugs.python.org/issue33275#msg315254 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.orglett.9b03216

At least in this case you'd find out pretty quickly!

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#13
post #9

Nice, thanks! I tried using ffmpeg for a minor video editing task I had a few months ago - just a cut, crop, rescale, and volume adjust. I've tried a few of the mainstream GUI video editing tools, and IMO, they all have incomprehensible UIs, are way too bloated, and usually far too expensive for what I'm trying to do. FFmpeg may not be dead simple, but I find it much easier to skim the command line flag list to figur…

Davinci Resolve has a free (as in beer) version that is quite capable and easy to use, even as someone who'd only used iMovie before. The only problem is that "how to do X in Davinci Resolve" has been taken over by slop.

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#14
post #11

I'd recommend Da Vinci Resolve for making timelapses. It performs really well and let's you scrub through before rendering anything which lets you clip just the part that you need. Plus you get the benefit of high export quality which can be fiddly with ffmpeg.

why is high export quality fiddly with ffmpeg?

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#15
post #9

Nice, thanks! I tried using ffmpeg for a minor video editing task I had a few months ago - just a cut, crop, rescale, and volume adjust. I've tried a few of the mainstream GUI video editing tools, and IMO, they all have incomprehensible UIs, are way too bloated, and usually far too expensive for what I'm trying to do. FFmpeg may not be dead simple, but I find it much easier to skim the command line flag list to figur…

To be fair, pulling out a professional video editor for small changes is like learning emacs to edit some config files. You don't need 99% of the features.

Also as an FYI to everyone, FFmpeg does support nVidia GPU acceleration but it might not be enabled in your build. So check if you use it a lot.

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#16
post #9

Nice, thanks! I tried using ffmpeg for a minor video editing task I had a few months ago - just a cut, crop, rescale, and volume adjust. I've tried a few of the mainstream GUI video editing tools, and IMO, they all have incomprehensible UIs, are way too bloated, and usually far too expensive for what I'm trying to do. FFmpeg may not be dead simple, but I find it much easier to skim the command line flag list to figur…

Indeed. I find it baffling how hard it is to just make lightweight edits to videos on Windows. At a bare minimum I would like to clip a video, or crop or change audio tracks. My cheat sheet of ffmpeg commands still remains to be the easiest way for me to do this.

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#19
Been making timelapses with ffmpeg since forever, such a great tool. I try to always have a cam pointed at the sky and upload a snapshot every minute. A telegram command triggers the creation of a timelapse with a similar cli command like the OP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GvaFBzOu2c

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#20
Where FFMPEG really shines is stabilising video.

Unfortunately not all versions have "vidstab".

ffmpeg -i "$1" -vf vidstabdetect=shakiness=5:show=1 dummy.avi

ffmpeg -i "$1" -vf yadif, format=yuv420p, vidstabtransform=zoom=2:optzoom=0:crop=black -c:v libx264 -b:a 32k stabilized264.mp4

Yesterweek's shaky video shot from a kayak: https://youtu.be/4pM0VeH4NE0?si=H2qTJfcvis3QmFlj

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