Webcam Time-Lapse Stuff.

[largerthanlife]

This one might sound a bit strange, but I don't really know what I'm after.

I want to do a bit of time-lapse footage of the view from my window. Dull eh?. I have set some software to take a still image (640x480) from my webcam every 10 seconds. All the archiveing of the images is working well, but how can I put these jpg files together to make a film? I thought Windows Movie Maker would do the trick, but you have to show the image for a second. I think I'd need 35 of my snapshots displayed in that second for it to be any good.

What software can build a film using jpeg files as its frames?.

The reason being, out the back of my flat there is a big building project going on. All the foundations are nearly complete and I wanted to do have a film, say 5 mins long of the whole build.

And before others mention, yes. I know what a google is. I also know that unless you know the keywords to search on, you get naff results!

[untitled_london]

a dirty solution would be to drop the frames/.jpgs into flash and set the timings as you see fit, that way you can speed them up of slow them down, when stuff of interest happens (ala green wing sillyness)

[Neil]

I reckon you could use that software that makes animated gifs, Animagic or something it's called.  I presume that takes in jpegs and converts them, it might even have a setting for exporting to avi?  Worth dicking about with.

[Uncle_Z]

Might be worth having a look at http://www.virtualdub.org/

I seem to remember that if you open a folder and select eg. shot0001.bmp it will open all shot**.bmp  files.  (Did this by accident with UT2004 screen caps)Dunno whether it works with jpgs though.

[largerthanlife]

Humm...

Hadn't thought of flash. Might give it a go but it really wants to be put on a DVD.

I'd thought of the giffs thing, as the Gif Construction Kit used to be able to export to avi, but then I'd loose the 24bit res. Plus, it would be a killer sized gif to view.

I might try looking at the avi/mpeg file format. It seems to be a lot harder than I thought!

[DerryPortice]

GIF Movie Gear, from http://www.gamani.com

it's amazing, you can get a full version from a file sharing program, it comes with the hacked registration key.

If ya don't believe me try out the free 30 day trial version, it rocks!

[Rats]

This is just the job for what you want to do http://www.goldwave.com/mqrelease.php
Just drag all the pictures into it and you can encode it into a video file. I'm guessing that would be better as the resulting gif is going to be massive.

edit: here's an example http://www.zen26454.zen.co.uk/1.avi (300kb)

[largerthanlife]

Thanks for your suggestions.

I found this Video Capturix Suite and it seems to be what I want!.

This is an example of the exciting sort of film I'm thinking of Dull Video

Now.. Who knows about Divx encoding? Can one achieve this for nout?

(Please respect my bandwidth..)

[Rats]

Yeah, go here http://search.suprnova.org/

and choose "applications" under the main category and search for "divx pro"

[largerthanlife]

Just thought I'd say thanks for all the suggestions, but I ended up writing my own little app to do the trick. There is a CreateAVI API libary going back to the days of Windows 3 I believe. Anyway,  I hacked some code about and got it working.

[cptwhite]

Jasc Animation Shop 3  would do the trick perfectly (comes with Paint shop Pro 5 and above).  Think you can get PSP5 for free I believe.

Wizard menu, select all your frames, set the time delay of the frames in the frame options, save as AVI ...2 minute job.

[Solid Snail]

You could use the Wendy Carlos version of the William Tell Overture from A Clockwork Orange as the background music.

Mind you it's only a minute long.