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Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

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Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#61
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.

There are a lot of free apps to make lightweight edits to videos on windows. One example is Avidemux. I have high-end video editors but Avidemux comes in handy more often than it should.

http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

Another is ShutterEncoder:

https://www.shutterencoder.com/en/

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#62
I took photos every few minutes for about a year. I wrote some custom code to pick out a set of frames from several consecutive days, but with the sun at the same angle in the sky. I then blended these frames together. This makes a ghostly look, without the bright flashes of cloud passing or weather changing. As I moved forward in time, I selected frames from the next angle in the sky, so it looks like only a day passes. You’ll see the shadows move as if a day passes, when really a year goes by.

https://youtu.be/RAsJE5ddt_U

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#63

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

Avi? What is this 2002?

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#64
post #58

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

I took some side photos of my pregnant wife, hoping to make a time-lapse, but I never got around to it. The photos aren’t perfectly aligned since her position changes a bit in each one. Can ffmpeg fix that?

[deleted]

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#65
post #58

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

I took some side photos of my pregnant wife, hoping to make a time-lapse, but I never got around to it. The photos aren’t perfectly aligned since her position changes a bit in each one. Can ffmpeg fix that?

Yes. That is how you make lively picture show.

Sometimes it tries to align unrelated objects, but that is just funny.

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#66
post #63

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

Avi? What is this 2002?

Dummy.avi is useless map of perceived jerkiness.

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#68
post #62

I took photos every few minutes for about a year. I wrote some custom code to pick out a set of frames from several consecutive days, but with the sun at the same angle in the sky. I then blended these frames together. This makes a ghostly look, without the bright flashes of cloud passing or weather changing. As I moved forward in time, I selected frames from the next angle in the sky, so it looks like only a day pas…

Very cool.

Re: Make timelapses easily using FFmpeg

#69
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I shoot RAW from an older Canon 5D which Resolve does not read natively. So there's a bit of a conversion step going from CR2. My typical workflow is to use Adobe RAW to process the images, then import the RAW directly to AE to render out with whatever repositioning or cropping. Let's not forget LR Timelapse[0] as part of the workflow too. [0] https://lrtimelapse.com/

I was reading about how to create timelapses on a canon dslr and someone pointed out that each frame you take adds to your shutter count and consumes the lifetime of your shutter. Do you find that a problem? For example a frame every 2 seconds for 8 hours is 14,400 actuations of the shutter.
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