About

Time Lapse Photography is a useful tool for science, art, security and surveillance, or just plain fun. This article shows how to acquire and assemble a series of images into an animated gif or video. Free software and an inexpensive web cam are needed.

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Things needed

• Web cam
• Computer
• Software (free, open source)

• Virtual Dub, or Gimp with an animation package.
• (optional) VideoCapture, a simple Python script to automatically acquire images, requires Python and PIL

Steps

1. Take a series of images with time lapses in between. You can use a simple program, like VideoCapture, or you can do it manually.
2. They should be named something like _0001.jpg, _0002.jpg, _0003.jpg...
3. Use Virtual Dub to make an .avi movie:

   1. open Virtual dub
   2. open _0001.jpg. Virtual dub will automatically load the entire sequence of images if they are named correctly.
   3. select Video/compression/ and choose your desired codec (DivX MPEG-4, for example)
   4. select File/Save as AVI, enter file name

4. Use Gimp to make an animated gif (requires the Gimp Animation Plug-in):

   1. open Gimp
   2. open _0001.jpg
   3. select Video/Frames to Image/ and select OK in the next dialog box. As with Virtual Dub, all images in the sequence are loaded automatically by GAP (Gimp Animation Package)
   4. select File/Save As, YourAnimationName.gif
   5. You can do this manually in Gimp, without the GAP plug-in, by placing each frame into a different layer of a gif image.

Tips & Suggestions

1. Other free software for time lapse movies:
   • ffmpeg (free, open source). Video editing software, more powerful than VirtualDub.
   • Simple Webcam Capture (free) snaps images at intervals.
   • Dorgem (free, open source) automatic capture, uploading and avi creation.
   • Microsoft Gif Animator (free)
   • Microsoft Timershot Powertoy (free, automatic webcam snapshots at adjustable intervals).
2. Virtual Dub and ffmpeg can also add a sound track to your movie
3. See also:Wikipedia time lapse page

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External resources

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