One Day - Time Lapse Series

[RadioFlyerMan]

One Day is a conjoined series of time lapse videos of Platte Bay, Lake Michigan, over the course of one day, with an identical field of view. I've done something similar in the past ( see my video "Flight through Time") but not with a static field of view which reduces the degrees of freedom. I've always wondered if it could be done and what it would look like. After a week of exploratory and method development flights, I arrived at a technique for aligning the field of view between 16 flights. Then I had to find a day with a certain amount of clouds (dramatic effect) and light winds. That is difficult. Then I had to get up early and spend all day flying, shooting, and off loading. It was a lot of work, and my wife was wondering "When are you going to land that thing?"

The results was not as spectacular as I thought it might be. I suppose it depends on the day's events, sunlight, etc. Once you start in the morning, it's quite a commitment. Next time I'm thinking the lapse segments need to encompass a longer "real time" more than 6 minutes. Maybe someone else can try this and see what you come up with.

 

[Lens]

Very nice RadioFlyerMan. Getting the right clouds and conditions can be quite time consuming. It turned out very well indeed.

 

[RadioFlyerMan]

Very nice RadioFlyerMan. Getting the right clouds and conditions can be quite time consuming. It turned out very well indeed.

Thanks! I have some other ideas to experiment further.

 

[old man mavic]

@RadioFlyerMan great stuff another epic video ,plus some great editing

 

[TreeHugger]

One Day is a conjoined series of time lapse videos of Platte Bay, Lake Michigan, over the course of one day, with an identical field of view. I've done something similar in the past ( see my video "Flight through Time") but not with a static field of view which reduces the degrees of freedom. I've always wondered if it could be done and what it would look like. After a week of exploratory and method development flights, I arrived at a technique for aligning the field of view between 16 flights. Then I had to find a day with a certain amount of clouds (dramatic effect) and light winds. That is difficult. Then I had to get up early and spend all day flying, shooting, and off loading. It was a lot of work, and my wife was wondering "When are you going to land that thing?"

The results was not as spectacular as I thought it might be. I suppose it depends on the day's events, sunlight, etc. Once you start in the morning, it's quite a commitment. Next time I'm thinking the lapse segments need to encompass a longer "real time" more than 6 minutes. Maybe someone else can try this and see what you come up with.

Brilliant! I want to do that! (when I'm not wrecking or repairing)

 

[Pgreza]

Very cool, I’d like to try that sometime. How did you put it in the same spot each time, waypoint?

 

[Pablo]

Very creative and some serious dedication there. Well done!

 

[THE CYBORG]

Nice one and you managed some good clouds all day

 

[rhberg]

Nicely done. Your perseverance is inspiring!

 

[Made2Phly]

I love it.

How do you get the “zoom in” effect with Google Earth at the beginning? I am working on a piece from Little Traverse Bay Area and would love to use the same effect.

 

[Micky52]

Wow, Great work John.

 

[Bryman]

It looks like the video wasn’t quite worth the time and effort but thank you for the learning experience.

 

[RadioFlyerMan]

Very cool, I’d like to try that sometime. How did you put it in the same spot each time, waypoint?

Thanks for asking... that was the difficulty and took a little research.

My experience with waypoints and with course lock will not produce consistent/steady results. So I used the FPV grid in the GO4 app to align with an arbitrary distant point(s). For consistency, I always took off from the same spot in my driveway and climbed to the same altitude of 400 ft. Although there would be a certain amount of drift, that drift would have little visual effect given that the field of view is so distant. Before the flight, I set my gimbal pitch rate to 1, and my pan rate to 2 in Assistant 2 Debug mode. These low rates would allow me to make precise adjustments to the rotational attitude of the AC, and the gimbal angle to keep my grid on the distant points during the entire flight. You could use just one point.

In post, all I had to do is stabilize the combined clip of the jpg's, zoom in to about 105% to allow for rotational and transverse adjustments of the next clip. For light wind conditions, I thought it was highly reproducible. My wind was about 5 to 10 mph.

Here's what it looked like in GO4...

 

[RadioFlyerMan]

I love it.

How do you get the “zoom in” effect with Google Earth at the beginning? I am working on a piece from Little Traverse Bay Area and would love to use the same effect.

Thanks... Here's what I did.

I'm using an iMac Pro with the Google Earth Pro app. I used the screen recording feature in Mac OS to record the video. I'm not sure what is available in Windows.

The first thing is to zoom in on the point of interest to it's final size. Then, align the circle (appears only when zooming) with your point. Start the screen recording and zoom out using the zoom bar. Finally, in post, I reverse the screen recording and then captured the end frame to a jpg to add the field of view lines, etc. Hope this helps.

 

[Made2Phly]

Thanks... Here's what I did.

I'm using an iMac Pro with the Google Earth Pro app. I used the screen recording feature in Mac OS to record the video. I'm not sure what is available in Windows.

The first thing is to zoom in on the point of interest to it's final size. Then, align the circle (appears only when zooming) with your point. Start the screen recording and zoom out using the zoom bar. Finally, in post, I reverse the screen recording and then captured the end frame to a jpg to add the field of view lines, etc. Hope this helps.

View attachment 109731
View attachment 109732

cool. I did a bit of googling. Google Earth has a function called Google Earth Studio. Check it out. It has "quick projects' that include what you did and many more. It can then be exported into FCP X or whatever, i.e., apparently bypassing the need to screen record.

 

[RadioFlyerMan]

It looks like the video wasn’t quite worth the time and effort but thank you for the learning experience.

I agree that could be improved. One of the problems was the subject matter. The only drama I had in a time lapse was sun angle, cloud shadows, cloud formation and movement, and maybe a sunset. I need a different subject. My thought is it would be better in a city environment with tall buildings. Then the drama would be provided with sun angle on the buildings, cloud movement, maybe traffic movement, and lights coming on in the buildings. I don't have that readily available, so I thought I'd see what would happen with my back yard.

Second, I could have improved the final video with zooming in and doing a slow pan across the field of view.

For me it was worth it. Based on my approach, I have some new ideas.

 

[Geofff]

One Day is a conjoined series of time lapse videos of Platte Bay, Lake Michigan, over the course of one day, with an identical field of view. I've done something similar in the past ( see my video "Flight through Time") but not with a static field of view which reduces the degrees of freedom. I've always wondered if it could be done and what it would look like. After a week of exploratory and method development flights, I arrived at a technique for aligning the field of view between 16 flights. Then I had to find a day with a certain amount of clouds (dramatic effect) and light winds. That is difficult. Then I had to get up early and spend all day flying, shooting, and off loading. It was a lot of work, and my wife was wondering "When are you going to land that thing?"

The results was not as spectacular as I thought it might be. I suppose it depends on the day's events, sunlight, etc. Once you start in the morning, it's quite a commitment. Next time I'm thinking the lapse segments need to encompass a longer "real time" more than 6 minutes. Maybe someone else can try this and see what you come up with.

Brilliant.

 

[RadioFlyerMan]

cool. I did a bit of googling. Google Earth has a function called Google Earth Studio. Check it out. It has "quick projects' that include what you did and many more. It can then be exported into FCP X or whatever, i.e., apparently bypassing the need to screen record.

Excellent! I was in such a hurry to finish the project I didn’t do any research. This will help.