Creating a long term time lapse from photos

Andrex · May 3, 2020

Has anyone on here attempted a long-term timelapse before? I'm not looking for tips on hyperlapse, or timelapses created within the time of one or two flights.

Here is a preliminary edit of my long-term timelapse (suggest right-clicking and looping it for best analysis as it's so short) project which I started on lockdown:

This is currently one photo per day, so we've only got about one second's worth of footage if played out at 24 fps, although I have reduced the frame-rate to make it 4 seconds long.

I'm pleased with the stablilisation, but have issues now with flickering.

Issues / notes:

* The weather and light vary each day
* Sunny days mean I have to take the photo at the same time after sunrise to minimise shadow flicker
* PTGui has been used so control points sync the images to reduce shaking
* Also, Adobe After Effects Warp Stabiliser has been used
* Flicker makes the video less enjoyable to watch

I do have a DNG copy of every photo, so wonder if I am going to need to manually edit the settings for every photo to try to reduce flicker due to sunny and cloudy days. Any other tips?

I'm sure that I could improve the quality of this a lot, either through better processing or better software.

I've seen plenty of drone timelapse videos, although a lot are either 30 minutes, or made from video faded together.

For this, I'd quite like to end up with a c. 10 second video come the end of Autumn of one photo every day at a frame rate of 24 fps, to make a nice, smooth, long-term timelapse.

I'm new to both video editing and timelapse in general, so even basic advice appreciated. I have access to PTGui Pro, Photoshop, Premier Pro and After Effects.

(spun off into its own thread from an earlier post)...

FlyingFilmmaker · May 3, 2020

Andrex said:
Has anyone on here attempted a long-term timelapse before? I'm not looking for tips on hyperlapse, or timelapses created within the time of one or two flights.

Here is a preliminary edit of my long-term timelapse (suggest right-clicking and looping it for best analysis as it's so short) project which I started on lockdown:

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This is currently one photo per day, so we've only got about one second's worth of footage if played out at 24 fps, although I have reduced the frame-rate to make it 4 seconds long.

I'm pleased with the stablilisation, but have issues now with flickering.

Issues / notes:

* The weather and light vary each day
* Sunny days mean I have to take the photo at the same time after sunrise to minimise shadow flicker
* PTGui has been used so control points sync the images to reduce shaking
* Also, Adobe After Effects Warp Stabiliser has been used
* Flicker makes the video less enjoyable to watch

I do have a DNG copy of every photo, so wonder if I am going to need to manually edit the settings for every photo to try to reduce flicker due to sunny and cloudy days. Any other tips?

I'm sure that I could improve the quality of this a lot, either through better processing or better software.

I've seen plenty of drone timelapse videos, although a lot are either 30 minutes, or made from video faded together.

For this, I'd quite like to end up with a c. 10 second video come the end of Autumn of one photo every day at a frame rate of 24 fps, to make a nice, smooth, long-term timelapse.

I'm new to both video editing and timelapse in general, so even basic advice appreciated. I have access to PTGui Pro, Photoshop, Premier Pro and After Effects.

(spun off into its own thread from an earlier post)...

I have a program called TLDF (Timelapse Deflicker) that works pretty well, but the UI isn't great, and I don't know how well it would do for that extreme flicker. There also something called LR timelapse, but as I remember it's pretty pricy. Davinci Resolve Studio has a pretty good deflickering plugin and I would think that Premiere or AE would have something similar, so that might be something to check out.

Andrex · Jun 6, 2020

Revisiting this after a month, I've been working on some more techniques. Here's another (albeit very short) video (blink and you'll miss it!...):

This was created using the following workflow:

1. PhotoShop lens correction on DNG files, export to TIFF
2. Import images into PTGui Pro and add control points / stitch - export to TIFF
3. Photoshop automate batch crop to remove edges of image which had varied after PTGui
4. Lightroom export back to DNG
5. Load into LRTimelapse and make edits, import into Lightroom etc.
6. Render video, but use individual JPGs to load into After Effects
7. Apply Warp Stabiliser in After Effects, render video

Still very difficult to minimise the flicker - the weather and lighting conditions just aren't always consistent.
You'll notice I try to time the photos each day to produce the same angle of shadow, although there are occasions when I'm not around at the right time of day so the shadow moves slightly.

I plan to continue this project for many more months, but I'd welcome any feedback or tips / advice to improve the editing process, as that's what makes a good timelapse.

I have yet to try Timelapse Deflicker as per DroneFilmmaker's suggestion, but having played with the above workflow that will probably be my next test bed.

In order to make the video longer, I may insert a few 25-minute timelapses taken during key parts of the construction - although this would mean the timelapse is no longer true to being one photo per day, it could improve its watchability. Any thoughts?