I am new to time-lapse and have a challenging problem I could use some help with. Please let me list my equipment: I have a Watec WAT-250D2 CCD camera, a 28 mm lens adapter, and a converter for composite/S-video to USB 2.0. I have GrabBee software.
I need to do the time-lapse over several days, however there are rapid movements that I want to try to capture within this long time-period. I thought, therefore, that a constant video approach would be best, speeding up the video later. Here are some problems I'm running into: In preliminary tests, I'm finding that file size increases 16GB/hour of video. Over 7 days, this is almost 3TB. The time-lapse needs to be high quality (or as good as I can get). My software allows me to save in AVI, MPEG-1 and 2, VCD-PAL, SVCD-PAL, DVD-PAL, WMV, and MP4. The video size and bitrate available changes depending on file type, and it seems MPEG-2 is best at 640X480, 9000 kbps, and 29 fps. I noticed that if I decrease the bitrate, I save a lot on file size, but are there any other ways to reduce the file size? I think I want to keep frame rate at 29 because for the time lapse to be a reasonable amount of time post-editing, I think it will have to be sped up a huge amount, and it will be super fast. If I'm starting with something shot at 12 fps, post-editing I'll probably see nothing/it'll be too fast, right?
Is it possible to shoot video in intervals? For example, maybe 5 seconds of video every 30 seconds? I imagine this would not edit together very smooth, and is it even possible to edit them together?
Thanks for your time.
I need to do the time-lapse over several days, however there are rapid movements that I want to try to capture within this long time-period. I thought, therefore, that a constant video approach would be best, speeding up the video later. Here are some problems I'm running into: In preliminary tests, I'm finding that file size increases 16GB/hour of video. Over 7 days, this is almost 3TB. The time-lapse needs to be high quality (or as good as I can get). My software allows me to save in AVI, MPEG-1 and 2, VCD-PAL, SVCD-PAL, DVD-PAL, WMV, and MP4. The video size and bitrate available changes depending on file type, and it seems MPEG-2 is best at 640X480, 9000 kbps, and 29 fps. I noticed that if I decrease the bitrate, I save a lot on file size, but are there any other ways to reduce the file size? I think I want to keep frame rate at 29 because for the time lapse to be a reasonable amount of time post-editing, I think it will have to be sped up a huge amount, and it will be super fast. If I'm starting with something shot at 12 fps, post-editing I'll probably see nothing/it'll be too fast, right?
Is it possible to shoot video in intervals? For example, maybe 5 seconds of video every 30 seconds? I imagine this would not edit together very smooth, and is it even possible to edit them together?
Thanks for your time.