Need Advice on Timelapse and zooming in / motion

[GeoPic]

Hello fellow Pictures to Exe Users

I would very much welcome your advice on the following effect I wish to achieve.

I use a camera to take a series of time-lapse images, i.e. 1 picture per second over say 3 hours. I have used in the past Photoshop CS6 to create a video of these time-lapse images, speeded up.

But now I am the proud owner of Pictures to Exe Deluxe

So not only would I like to know how to do this in P2E if possible, but also, is it possible to apply motion i.e. zoom in on a video created from multiple time-lapse images? I cannot do this in CS6 and would like the viewer to not only see the speeded up time-lapse but also for it to be zooming in on one part of the MOVING image as they watch.

Thank you so much for helping a newbie

Chris

[Ken Cox]

Chris

if you had done a search you would have got

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=search&fromMainBar=1

there are quite few entries and comments

now if you read them all you might get some answers to your questions, which in turn will likely give you more questions -not picking favorites but - Jan's show is quite spectacular

I have a grandson that is hot for time-lapse - but he is not a pte user - he has too many things on his plate now )))))))

hope I have steered you in the right direction

ken

[GeoPic]

Thanks Ken

I appreciate your help - the results do look great

I just couldn't find enough information on HOW to achieve the results I see in the search above

Thanks for your input though I appreciate it

[Guest Yachtsman1]

So not only would I like to know how to do this in P2E if possible, but also, is it possible to apply motion i.e. zoom in on a video created from multiple time-lapse images? I cannot do this in CS6 and would like the viewer to not only see the speeded up time-lapse but also for it to be zooming in on one part of the MOVING image as they watch.

Thank you so much for helping a newbie

Chris

[Lin Evans]

Hi Chris,

There are at least two ways to approach this with PTE. First, the decision about the image size. Since your scenario requires 10,800 images (60 images per minute times 60 minutes per hour tines 3 hours = 10,800 images) to avoid serious system resource loading, you may want to resize all except those images you intend to zoom in on to the size you intend for your output. If you intend to zoom in for some predetermined period, then use higher resolution on only those images which will be involved. For example if the zoom is to take place over a 10 second period, then ten images would be involved. The other images should be no larger than your final video resolution. If HD 1080P then there is no need for the vertical aspect to be greater than 1080 pixels for most images.

Next sequence them in PTE in the order you wish them to appear and create an MP4 h.264 video. Load this video back in a new PTE file and perform your zooms and other desired animations on the video with PTE using the timeline and appropriate keyframes. Finally, save your work and output as either an MP4 h.264 video, or convert using the PTE convert facility and output as a Windows or MacIntosh native executable file.

The second way would be to perform the relative zooms on the images before creating the first video, but this method with only a one second and "quick, no transition" between images might be a little more time consuming than doing the zooms after the video had been created and before the final video output.

Remember, PTE also allows you to fine tune the video speed so that if you needed to slightly speed up the final video output, that would be easy enough to accomplish.

Best regards,

Lin

[davegee]

Hi Lin,

Did I miss something?

What's the point in using "oversized" images for the first MP4? When it is in MP4 the oversized images are re-sized to 1080 high and when you zoom into that section you don't magically get that higher resolution back?

DG

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dave,

Maybe I didn't make it clear ... That's why I said there are two ways to create it. The higher resolution images, during the creation of the original MP4 are zoomed into and the result is a 1080p image created from the 10 or so high resolution images rather than from 1080p resolution images.

If the original video is created without zooming and subsequently zoomed into as a video, there is no advantage in using higher resolution images. I believe it might be more difficult to zoom into the still images because one would necessarily have to match the degree of ending zoom on the first image to the degree of starting zoom on the second image, etc., and we're talking, in the relevant case, about one second frames. The result might be better, depending on the degree of zoom and the quality of the originals to do the zooms via the stills, but it might also not be worth the added effort.

I'm not certain which way would actually work better in real practice because it would be necessary to probably use the navigation bar and "drag" (scrub) through a video to place keyframes for video zoom in and out. I usually like to do my zooming in camera when shooting video, but in the case of time-lapse photography I suppose one would just have to experiment to find the best solution depending on individual circumstances.

Best regards,

Lin

[GeoPic]

Wow Thank you, you are ALL WONDERFUL

I really appreciate your help and will let you know how I get on

Thank you so much

Chris

[neilj]

Chris

You say that you cannot create the zoom in CS6.

Yes you can, there is a tutorial here

Neil

[davegee]

Hi Neil,

CS4 also includes that facility?

BTW That's a great resource!!

DG

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dave,

Just want to remind folks who are using Photoshop and contemplating video time lapse creation, that to do any video editing with Photoshop, one must have the extended version of Photoshop or Photoshop CS6 which has video capabilities in the non-extended version - Thanks Neil for the reminder....

Excellent video tutorial, but makes me appreciate the simplicity and visual ease of edit with PTE even more. The number of steps necessary with Photoshop to accomplish what was done in the tutorial shows the power of Photoshop Extended as a video editing tool, but also focuses the viewers attention on the complexity of Photoshop. Of course the facility to immediately change the video resolution in Photoshop before rendering is a powerful feature.

Some of the things shown in the tutorial such as masking are far easier and more powerful with PTE in my opinion.

Best regards,

Lin

[neilj]

Hi Lin,

No need for the extended version of photoshop anymore for video, it's included in CS6 as standard.

Neil

[Lin Evans]

Hi Neil,

Thanks! Thanks for the reminder!

True, but the majority of our PTE users do not have CS6 nor are most on the Adobe Cloud so for the majority, the video capabilities are in the Extended versions.

Best regards,

Lin