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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Time lapse-Elements/Quicktime export
Erik Markov, Photographer
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Kokomo | IN | | Posted: 7:17 PM on 05.05.09 |
->> I've just started playing with this stuf. Shot a time lapse over the weekend, didn't come out too bad, some shifting exposures etc, but overall for my first one, I'm happy and its a learning experience.
My problem is in exporting it. I bought Quicktime Pro for XP which is working well for putting the time lapses together. I've got about 6 different sequences I'm trying to put together into one continuous movie. So I put all the time lapses together in QT, exported them as QT files, then thought I would use Adobe Elements to put all the sequences together because then I could add the audio, transitions, title slides etc.
Well putting the sequences together in Elements worked ok. But when I export the finished movie from Elements, its extremely choppy looking. Lots of ghosting in the video etc.
I'm sure it's some sort of video issue, the specifics of the settings I'm using in Elements or something. But I've tried exporting 15-20 clips using different settings and none of them look right. Can't figure how the QT sequences can go from looking good right out of QT to crap coming out of Elements.
I uploaded two clips to my page to see the difference. The Elements exported clip is particularly noticeable in the black hot air balloon in the foreground about halfway thru.
I'm about ready to kick Elements to the curb. it works ok for what it is, but its FAR from perfect. I'm sure FCP is the answer but, that's out of my budget.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. |
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Rene Mireles, Photographer
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Holland | MI | USA | Posted: 9:51 AM on 05.06.09 |
->> Erik,
Just learning Time Lapse myself and figuring things out as well, one thing I have noticed is that when using quicktime it will export using the h.264 standard and your elements might not support exporting the same way. causing the chopping playback when all put togethor and reexported, my recommendations would to try to redue the whole movie in just elements and see how that displays. I moved to FCP to do timelapse since all the info I been reading pointed to that and adobe after effects.
Here's an example I just made for our open house
http://riveravestudios.com/RASblog/?p=139 |
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Max Gersh, Photographer
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St. Louis | MO | USA | Posted: 10:29 AM on 05.06.09 |
->> Erik,
While I have not used Quicktime to put any of my time-lapses together, I have found solutions that work.
I have done one in FCP. It was a pain. Any video editing software will want to render every single image. It gave my very detailed control but most of the time it is not something I would need.
The best way I have found to do it is in Photoshop (I think you need CS3 or above).
-Have all of your images sequential in one folder
-File/Open
-Select the first image in the folder
-Hit the checkbox for image sequence
-Open
-Set it to 30fps (unless something else is needed)
-File/Export/Render to Video
From there, you can set your specific settings as needed. I generally export to a MOV file unless I need a quick Flash file for my site.
With this method, I have never experienced any of the ghosting that is present in your elements export.
Is the ghosting apparent in the original export file or only once it is published to the web? I have a time-lapse that is fine if I play it off of my computer but on my website, it starts to look pixelated. http://tinyurl.com/cpxn2b
Also, what frame rate did you export it at. It almost appears that the choppiness could be attributed to slightly low FPS. It could also be from how it was shot. How often were you taking a picture for the time-lapse? |
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Erik Markov, Photographer
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Kokomo | IN | | Posted: 11:35 AM on 05.06.09 |
->> The ghosting isn't there in the original file out of QT. I know it's kinda tough to see in those two I uploaded with the size of them. Coming straight out of quicktime, the files look gorgeous.
The reason I bought QT was because I tried to put it together with Elements (and I forgot to mention it's Premiere I'm using) first and you can't adjust your frame rate over several hundred images. You have to do each frame individually which takes forever. With QT it allows you to adjust the frame rate making it much easier. Problem with it was tho I wanted to put transitions in between the different time lapse sequences I had shot so it would be smooth. Little harder to put nice dissolve transitions in with QT, which is when I then went to Premiere Elements with the exported QT time lapse sequences.
Then when I tried to export from Premiere as a full file, with my 6 time lapse sequences as a short movie in one file, I got the ghosting.
I don't think it's my frame rate I shot at. I did a frame every 5 seconds, 1/5-1/10 of a sec. The slow shutter allowed some blur of the people walking around but the balloons were moving much slower and thus didn't blur much at all. QT handled taking the files and making a short time lapse and looked very nice. I will have to look at what Rene mentioned about the h264 and see if I can play around with that some to get a better file.
Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it. Shooting the time lapse is easy, processing the photos is easy. What's most frustrating is knowing what end result I want for the whole project but not being able to figure out how to get there. |
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David Harpe, Photographer
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Louisville | KY | USA | Posted: 2:43 PM on 05.06.09 |
| ->> After Effects really is the gold standard for this sort of thing. There is so much more you can do in AE to get the look you want. For example, if you don't feel like shooting everything at a slow shutter speed, you can add realistic blur/smear in numerous ways to get the look you want. You can do color correction that shifts over time if you have white balance issues. If you want to do digital zooms on frames larger than your output resolution, AE can do really nice camera-realistic zooms with fine-tuned accel/decel and positioning. It renders final output in just about any format you can imagine. AE is multiprocessor aware, so it'll use all of the CPU and memory you have on hand. It's a really fantastic program. |
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Max Gersh, Photographer
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St. Louis | MO | USA | Posted: 3:40 PM on 05.06.09 |
->> Erik,
When you say you can't adjust the frame rate over several hundred images at once, are you referring to how long the image appears? For instance, you want every image to appear for only one frame to make it 30 fps, right?
I had that problem in Final Cut. It imports the images to appear for x frames. I found a preference option that allows you to adjust that number of frames. Before I started, I would make sure it was set to 1 frame that way I could just drag and drop all of them onto my time-line.
I just looked in Premiere Pro CS3 and it appears it has the same option.
-Edit/Preferences/General
-Change Still Image Default Duration to 1 (mine was at 150 as a default)
-Check "Default scale to frame size"
-Hit OK
-Import photos
-Drag them onto your timeline
This of course will take some time to render and export but once you have your preferences set, it is essentially drag and drop. However, I don't know if these preference options are in Premiere Elements. There should be something similar. |
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Max Gersh, Photographer
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St. Louis | MO | USA | Posted: 5:42 PM on 05.06.09 |
| ->> On a side note, I believe you have to have Photoshop CS3 Extended Edition to have the Image Sequence option in the open screen. |
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