DJI Mavic, Air and Mini Drones
Friendly, Helpful & Knowledgeable Community
Join Us Now

Weird timelapse question

justcruisin

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 20, 2021
Messages
107
Reactions
54
Location
USA
Hello,

I have been videoing an aerial tour through my neighborhood for almost a year. Same route, altitude, etc every week. There is a construction project that I fly over each time. I have realized (belatedly) that I might be able to create a timelapse of this site that would look cool. If I had it to do all over I would have programmed a waypoint and shot a photo each week in RAW. And I would have bought Bitcoin.

But I didn’t, and now I have videos rendered in 4k but want to try a timelapse anyway. So what should I do?

I’m guessing it will be something like pause each video at the same spot, take a screen grab, put a 1080 box around the subject, then string all the grabs together into a video?

So from the experts on here, what would you do?

Thanks!

Videos captured in Dlog10 4k 24fps with Mavic 2 Pro, rendered in 4k 24fps in Davinci Resolve. I think I still have all the original, unrendered videos if that helps.
 
To start a conversation, I’m not an expert although have done a lot of time lapse. If you just want a stationary time lapse (rather than a hyperlapse) then the camera must be in exactly the same place for each photograph. I’ve tried this many times with my M2P & I1P with very little success. Even capturing all the frames in one time slot and on reasonably calm days/evenings the drone moves enough, especially in altitude to make time lapse very difficult. Because of the motion, you get parallax errors on buildings, trees etc and when u tray to align the frames, then the software distorts the images in an attempt to align them. This example was captured over about 45 mins and aligned and strongly stabilized in post. (
). In your case, even if you flow exactly the same track with preprogramed waypoints, finding frames in the same Lat/Long/Alt will be very difficult, maybe impossible. You can take the Lat/long data from each flight (extract it using Airdata is easiest) and drop it into a spreadsheet and try to align lat/long. You may be surprised how misaligned each flight was. I’ve done flights using my I1P & Autopilot in summer & winter to show a transition from winter to summer using a preprogrammed flight path. What I found was, the drone did not travel exactly the same path and I expect that’s because of the inaccuracy of GPS and the those inaccuracies changing from day to day (GPS is not geostationary). So I doubt you can do a time lapse from your existing clips. Just my thoughts.
 
To start a conversation, I’m not an expert although have done a lot of time lapse. If you just want a stationary time lapse (rather than a hyperlapse) then the camera must be in exactly the same place for each photograph. I’ve tried this many times with my M2P & I1P with very little success. Even capturing all the frames in one time slot and on reasonably calm days/evenings the drone moves enough, especially in altitude to make time lapse very difficult. Because of the motion, you get parallax errors on buildings, trees etc and when u tray to align the frames, then the software distorts the images in an attempt to align them. This example was captured over about 45 mins and aligned and strongly stabilized in post. (
). In your case, even if you flow exactly the same track with preprogramed waypoints, finding frames in the same Lat/Long/Alt will be very difficult, maybe impossible. You can take the Lat/long data from each flight (extract it using Airdata is easiest) and drop it into a spreadsheet and try to align lat/long. You may be surprised how misaligned each flight was. I’ve done flights using my I1P & Autopilot in summer & winter to show a transition from winter to summer using a preprogrammed flight path. What I found was, the drone did not travel exactly the same path and I expect that’s because of the inaccuracy of GPS and the those inaccuracies changing from day to day (GPS is not geostationary). So I doubt you can do a time lapse from your existing clips. Just my thoughts.
I've been doing static (tripod) timelapses and timelapse with a slider (motion timelapse) since 2015. I cannot even imagine doing it from a moving drone. I probably have done several hundred of them over this time. Most construction, (moving cranes, buildings adding floors, etc.) are done over a period of time from a stationary tripod. I would not even consider doing a timelapse from a drone. A total waste of time and effort in my opinion.
 
Right, this is not ideal.

I realize there will be more movement that if this has been filmed from a stationary tower. I’m hoping since I shot in 4k I can reframe with a crop down to 1080 to capture somewhat the same scene even if the drone was a little left or right, high or low, etc from it’s normal path.

So….with what I have, what is the preferred method to grab the screen shots and stitch them into a timelapse? Especially looking for advice from those experienced with Davinci Resolve.

Thanks!
 
If you have Adobe After Effects you can do this pretty easily by placing one common thing into the frame and have each of the layers match, then make your time lapse with movement, going around the object during the video. It is best to be consistent and the idea of a regular path that you run each time would do this. Best of luck for your project.
 
If you have Adobe After Effects you can do this pretty easily by placing one common thing into the frame and have each of the layers match, then make your time lapse with movement, going around the object during the video. It is best to be consistent and the idea of a regular path that you run each time would do this. Best of luck for your project.

thank you I will look into Adobe After Effects!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Pixeldawg
I would try lining the clips up in Resolve so you fly over the same place at the same time in each clip, then cut each clip a couple frames after the beginning of the clip before it and add a 2 frame (or longer) disolve to each one. The idea is to have it fade from one clip to the next as the video plays, creating a sort of video-hyperlapse. It would be quite a bit of work, but could give good results, depending on how similar the flight paths are. Hope that makes sense. 🙂
 
Lycus Tech Mavic Air 3 Case

DJI Drone Deals

New Threads

Forum statistics

Threads
130,586
Messages
1,554,123
Members
159,586
Latest member
DoubleBarS