How do I calculate a 1-year timelapse interval for a 5–6 minute video at 24 fps?
Asked 11/10/2013
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I want to leave a Brinno TLC200 Pro on a shelf facing my backyard and shoot for about a year. My target is a final timelapse of around 5–6 minutes at 24 fps. What shooting interval should I use, and is there a better way to schedule the shots so the video doesn’t just flicker between day and night?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
12y ago
2 Answers
6
That's some pretty simple math going on there...
5 (minutes of video)
* 60 (secs/minute)
* 24 (frames/sec)
= 7200 (frames total)
7200 (frames total) / 365 (days/year) = 19.7 frames/day
Simply rounded that's 20 frames per day
Another way to work it is to shoot 24fps and shoot one frame per hour, which would put your final film at 365 seconds (one per day) although a film alternating between dark & light that often for that long, is going to be pretty annoying to watch.
One interesting way to shoot those 20 frames at different times each day (so start at midnight on day 1 then shoot every 12 seconds for 20 frames, advancing the time of day you shoot the next 20 by 4 minutes each day.
That covers the whole 24 hours, you could mess around planning for dawn/dusk times (base your maths on whatever day 1 is then start an hour before dawn and time it end an hour after sunset which would make the math only slightly more complicated but might make for a better video. It's pretty easy to get sunrise/sunset times for your city online.
Originally by user14028. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user14028
12y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
For a 5-minute video at 24 fps, you need 5 × 60 × 24 = 7,200 frames total. Over 365 days, that’s about 19.7 frames per day, so roughly 20 frames per day. For 6 minutes, it’s 8,640 frames total, or about 24 frames per day.
So the simplest target is about 20–24 frames each day.
If you shoot one frame every hour for a year, you’ll get about 6 minutes at 24 fps, but the result will constantly alternate between day and night, which will likely be distracting.
A better approach is to capture each day’s frames in a short block rather than spreading them across the full day. For example, shoot about 20 frames over a couple of minutes each day, then shift that block slightly later each day if you want the finished video to gradually move through different times of day over the year. That gives you about one second of footage per day while avoiding the harsh light/dark flicker of hourly shooting.
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