Jan. 8, 2012
VIDEO: Silver Spring in timelapse (Preview)
Downtown Silver Spring on a wintry Monday night
by Tolu Omokehinde, Print Managing Photo Editor
Tolu Omokehinde
On January 2nd, the last day of winter break for MCPS students, this street was busy with many people and cars passing through.
Despite the freezing temperatures, many Silver Spring residents braved the cold on Monday night to hang out with friends, ice skate with family and see the newest winter blockbusters. Nick Grossman and I, however, grabbed our tripods, set up our cameras and endured the freezing winter wind. For about five hours we stood outside, watching our cameras take still frames of the movement and liveliness that is downtown Silver Spring.
This video is an example of various timelapses that will be completed in the upcoming weeks. These timelapse videos will be part of a series to make a larger, more complete, video that will be completed by end of the school year.
Just to provide some perspective, this particular video was composed of 2,800 photos taken over a five hour period. It took several days of computer and video processing to make. The next video, which will be a timelapse of Montgomery Blair High, is still in the making, and so far has about 23,000 photos taken over a two month period.
We hope you enjoy it!
Editor's Note: Nick Grossman was a 2010-2011 Silver Chips Print Photo Editor.
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2) Taking a video for 5 hours not only waste battery power, but trying to compress a 5 hour video into a couple of seconds is not only a strain on the computer but quality of this video is greatly decreased.
3) To get a smoother time lapse effect, the multiple exposures (for example: -2, 0, +2) must be taken at certain intervals. For example, if you want to do a 5 hour time lapse of clouds moving, 5 hours = 18,000 seconds. Cloud movement in time lapse can be best taken at 5-15 second intervals. So lets say you choose 15 second intervals, 18000 (seconds in 5 hours) /15 (every 15 seconds the shutter will take a shot) = 1200 frames or pictures. Now your eyes normally see things at 24 FPS (frames per second) so 1200 frames / 24 FPS = 50 seconds of footage.
Compared to video, where a typical camera shooting at 1080p HD quality will recording at 30 FPS. So if you think of it in frames, 30 FPS over the course of 5 hours = (30 (FPS) * 5 (hours) * 60 (minuets in 1 hour) * 60 (seconds in 1 hour) = 540,000 frames.
Compression wise is easier to make a 50 second video from 1200 frames than it is from 540,000 frames.
That is why doing a video of 5 hours of video doesn't really work. I hope this explanation teaches you something! :)
Keep doing big things!