-Time-lapse videos are one of those things that look super difficult to create, but are actually really easy to accomplish.
As you see more and more of these videos show up online, you might be wondering how you too can join in on the fun.
Well, I'm here at TechShop in San Francisco and I've been building my own time-lapse contraption.
I will hope you make one of these videos for less than 10 bucks.
Here's what you'll need.
You'll need a GoPro camera or another camera that can do a time-lapse function,
Krazy Glue or Super Glue, a wind-up kitchen timer, a quarter-inch knot which I've already attached to the timer with Super Glue, some sticky putty or Blu-Tack, and your tripod of choice.
Now, our task is to attach the camera to the kitchen timer and the kitchen timer to the tripod.
If you have a GoPro mount, it makes things really easy, but if you don't, here's how you do it.
I've already attached the quarter-inch knot to the kitchen timer.
So,
the tripod fits in perfectly.
And this is a standard size, so a quarter-inch knot is probably what your tripod takes too.
Now, you'll take some Blu-Tack or Museum Putty and we'll roll it up.
This is what we'll use to attach the camera to the kitchen timer so that you don't render it completely useless.
And if you wanna [unk] with it later on, you can.
All right, on goes the putty and to that, the GoPro to make sure it's on tight.
There you go.
So, the way it works is we'll wind it up and it will rotate taking your time-lapse video.
And when it's on, you'll even get a ring.
Okay, the next thing we need to do is set up the time-lapse on the GoPro.
I'll set it up to take one photo every two seconds.
Now, in order for us to figure out how long this video will be, we have to do some math.
We're taking one photo every two seconds.
That's 30 photos per minute.
Thirty times 30 minutes that we're shooting is 900 photos.
Now, if one frame is one photo and there are 30 frames per second, we'll get a 30-second video.
I can supervise for that.
Okay, our time-lapse tripod is ready to go.
Our camera is set and the last thing we need to do is make sure this thing is level.
So, you can use a standard leveling tool or, if you wanna get geeky, download a leveling app.
I've got one here on my iPod and it seemed to bring it down a little bit and bring it up a little bit.
And it's perfectly level.
Okay, let's take this into the streets of San Francisco and shoot our time-lapse video.
All right, our GoPro ran for 30 minutes,
and now, it's time to make our time-lapse video.
So, I uploaded all these photos onto my computer.
And as you can see, we've got a folder full of hundreds of photos.
Now, there are lots of software that'll let you make time-lapse video, but the easiest one and the fastest, honestly, is QuickTime Pro.
So, open that up, got a file, open image sequence.
We'll find "My Folder." There it is.
Open.
And at this point, you can decide if you want
30 frames per second or 60 frames per second.
At 60 frames, it will be a lot smoother, but you only have half the length of the video.
Let's stick with 30.
And you'll see that QuickTime has already done all of the work.
It actually already put the video together, but let's just preview it to make sure it looks right.
That looks good.
It's a little rough, but once it renders and exports, it will look a lot better.
So, let's do that right now.
We'll go to "file," "export,"
give it a name, call it "Time-Lapse." And you have some options here.
There are a lot of settings to choose from.
You can really dig in here, but one of the settings that you wanna pay attention to is compression type.
Make sure you're exporting as a JPEG.
One of the other things you might wanna tweak is the quality.
So, the higher quality, the larger the file will be.
I'll go ahead and choose high, not quite best, but it'll look pretty good.
Hit okay.
Okay.
And it will export.
All right, our video has exported and we've got a 30-second time-lapse with a 180-degree pan, ready for uploading on YouTube or even Vimeo.
And it's all things to our time-lapse accessory with our GoPro camera.
All right, let's give this thing a look.
Now, how pro does that look?
And now, you know how cheap and easy it is to make your own time-lapse accessory.
