Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

I use an old Android phone with a long deprecated app called MobileWebCam (still available on certain sites) I removed the battery and connected the charger directly. It uploads a picture every minute, a Node.js backend creates the timelapse with ffmpeg. Currently experimenting with a TP-Link C520 cam and a Raspberry Pi. You can point the camera to different positions using ONVIF, use ffmpeg to grab the stream and take a snapshot, then process this again on the server. Downside is the wide angle / fish eye lens and occasionally a corrupted stream snapshot.

Blender has a very well done video editor, it's probably my favorite foss video editor so far. It also uses ffmpeg under the hood

Worth a try!

If you want an all sky solution, zwoastro.com ships an all sky lens with many of their small sensor planetary cameras. There's also a selection of software to handle the photos, making time-lapse, uploading etc. It came in really useful for seeing the Aurora outburst. Here's a short write up I did for my local club recently: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?id=101640086556073&story_fb...

I'm also working on a new one that uses an ASI533 Pro and a 4mm lens from a mirrorless camera to get better quality images.

How about

    $ ffmpeg-english "capture video from the camera every 1 second and write it to jpg files"
    $ ffmpeg-english "take all of the images ending with .jpg in this directory and make a 30fps timelapse of it"

Sound awesome? Here's the code for ffmpeg-english:

    #!/usr/bin/env python3

    import openai
    import sys
    import os
    import time

    # Ensure you have set your OpenAI API key as an environment variable
    openai.api_key = os.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")
    client = openai.OpenAI()

    def get_ffmpeg_command(task_description):
        # Call the OpenAI API with the task description
        response = client.chat.completions.create(
            model="gpt-4",
            messages=[
                {"role":"system", "content":"You are an expert in FFmpeg commands. Given the following English description of a task, you respond with the correct FFmpeg command. Do not include any other information in your response except for the command only."},
                {"role":"user", "content":task_description},
            ],
            max_tokens=150,
            temperature=0.5
        )
        command = response.choices[0].message.content.strip()
        return command

    def main():
        if len(sys.argv) ", file=sys.stderr)
            sys.exit(1)

        task_description = " ".join(sys.argv[1:])
        ffmpeg_command = get_ffmpeg_command(task_description)

        # some basic guardrails
        assert(ffmpeg_command.startswith("ffmpeg"))
        assert(";" not in ffmpeg_command)
        assert("|" not in ffmpeg_command)

        print(f"Executing command: {ffmpeg_command} in 2 seconds (^C to cancel)")
        time.sleep(2)
        os.system(ffmpeg_command)

    if __name__ == "__main__":
        main()

I use a Raspberry Pi Zero with a Pi Camera and ffmpeg to make timelapses of plants growing from seedlings each season when we plant tomatoes/potatoes/etc. It's a great way to show the kids how different plants grow from seed, and such a cheap/easy project.

Bash script running on a cron job every hour with:

    DATE=$(date +"%Y%m%d%H%M")
    raspistill -o /home/pi/timelapse/$DATE.jpg -awb off -awbg 1.8,1.6

Then another bash script running once a week:

    DATE=$(date +"%Y%m%d%H%M")
    ffmpeg -framerate 12 -pattern_type glob -i '*.jpg' -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -vf 'scale=1920:-2,crop=1920:1080:0:(in_h-1000)' 'timelapse-$DATE.mp4'
    scp timelapse-$DATE.mp4 username@my.server:/home/user/

(Edited/simplified, I do a few other things in the scripts like compile the timelapse with pre-made timelapses and share via nginx on the Pi itself)