Time Lapse Recording.........

[ian.cant]

Hi Guys, could do with some other views of a scenario i am currently looking into. I have already trialed my method and am fairly certain of the route i am going to take, i just want to cover as many angles as possible so your thoughts on methods and kit to use would be interesting.

I am putting together a system to monitor a building sites contsruction over a a six week period, basically they are digging a hole over an area the size of a football pitch, not particularly deep as far as i know and for the purpose of info they are going to effectivly put some large tiles in it. They aint really going to be tiles im just trying to give you a picture of whats happening.

The object of the exercise is, over the six weeks to build a time lapse image file of the project from 2 opposite corners. One camera will be in the corner they will start in where they will place the tiles from one wing of the pitch to the other wing, then starting on the next row across the pitch, with the other camera in the opposite corner where the final tile will be placed, does that make sense? This could easily be done with a man and digital camera but they want to automate things a bit and thats why im involved.

Image quality is of fairly high importance, all recordings required will be through the day and the project starts in 6 weeks time so roughly mid May when the weather/light levels should be relativly good.

I want to know what camera and lens you would suggest, what recording device and assuming you suggest DVR what frame rates etc. It is anticipated that the work will be carried out over a 6 week period or 30 working days and each days recordings will be archived on a daily basis so 30 tapes, CD's or DVD's or whatever else.

The archived recordings will be ultimatly condensed into a 6 minute video clip that can be inserted into a Powerpoint presentation, the ultimate goal being the ability to see the couple of hundres tiles being added in 6 minutes from the 6 weeks project.

Bear in mind the cost of the project has to be effective against the man with the digital camera so spending

[stewymac]

id say 2x cams + a cheap dvr and lowest frame rate,then dowload the file to a cf card then onto a pc daily,at the end you should have loads of images/video, which with the use of many picture/video editing programmes out there you could edit away to get the final copy...and burn the daily video to dvd incase you get any problems with the ps stored images,like the pc going tits up on the last day..

[Alpat Systems]

Sounds like an interesting project.

I'd go with an I.P based cam/pc solution to capture the images, then use something like Apple's iMovie or QuickTime Pro software to do the editing.

You can tell iMovie how long you want each photo to appear before showing the next one. It's kind of like creating a slideshow, except instead of giving each image a few seconds, you give it only a fraction of a second.

[ian.cant]

!

[Guest anguscanplay]

weve used a freeware programme called homewatcher before runs on the laptop and takes a photo every second if its the same as the last one its discarded but if its different it saves it and uploades to a website its like very lapsy timelapse run the thumbnails together and its almost motion

angus

[ian.cant]

Thats the best from all you guys on here?

[Rich]

I'd probably go for 2 dynamic DTV-VLL cameras in TP1000 housings, with suitable AI lenses to cover half of the target area.

A SysQ 4 Channel tardis with probably a 500Gb Hdd if wanting to do full 30 days recording at maximum quality. Set on motion detection (most sensitive) and turned off during non working hours.

If you set up a schedule recording for the working hours you would get approx 12fps per camera, motion detection would vary depending on when the recorder was triggered.

You could use a laptop via network connection to grab the images daily from the DVR, a usb drive or external usb CD writer.

Or if there is an office on site and the person creating the video is there, then run a network cable straight into the DVR to the office and they can access the footage when they like and create the 6 min video there and then.

How are you getting cables/power to each camera? local power with the DVR at one end and maybe a wireless vide transmitter from the other?

Then I believe with the software you have the option to take a snap shot of any given video file, this would make it easier to grab the best image of a tile as it has been fitted. Images can then be imported into whatever to create a new movie file or straight into powerpoint.

If you have 6 minutes, how many tiles are going to be laid per minute?

That kit should come just under your top end budget with a bit of fiddling.

[ian.cant]

If you have 6 minutes, how many tiles are going to be laid per minute?

Its an unknown time reallyRichie, i dont know the the exact number of tiles and therefore cant be sure how long the clip will last but 6 mins is the sort of target figure.

My trial method was to use a high res camera connected to a CF DVR set at 1/30 recording ona shcedual from 07:00 to 20:00. Backed up each days data with the CF card to my PC and running the backups in the software viewer that came with the machine was a doddle and 2 days backup was less than 40MB. The clips could then be played quite quickly with the variable frame selection and saved as an AVI file. Obviously i can save a small clip of each tile being dropped into place which can then be run on any/most media players. At this point the job becomes someone else's headache but it must surely be easy to stitch the clips together to make one video clip of each tile being slotted in.

I was thinking of using a high res colour camera rather than the day/nights and was hoping someone would suggest a model to use. will probably end up with the top vista high res unit and good lens, as you say in a basic housing. The CF DVR is easy to use for the client and will be the most likely unit more so because it records 1/30 (1 frame every 30 secs) and because no one has suggested an alternative. Surprisingly the suppliers i have spoken to have been rather unhelpfull (except Dynamic) and in some cases have not even bothered to reply to my requests for help.

Thers still time to alter things which is why i was asking for help here.

[cutwitt]

Its an unknown time reallyRichie, i dont know the the exact number of tiles and therefore cant be sure how long the clip will last but 6 mins is the sort of target figure.

My trial method was to use a high res camera connected to a CF DVR set at 1/30 recording ona shcedual from 07:00 to 20:00. Backed up each days data with the CF card to my PC and running the backups in the software viewer that came with the machine was a doddle and 2 days backup was less than 40MB. The clips could then be played quite quickly with the variable frame selection and saved as an AVI file. Obviously i can save a small clip of each tile being dropped into place which can then be run on any/most media players. At this point the job becomes someone else's headache but it must surely be easy to stitch the clips together to make one video clip of each tile being slotted in.

I was thinking of using a high res colour camera rather than the day/nights and was hoping someone would suggest a model to use. will probably end up with the top vista high res unit and good lens, as you say in a basic housing. The CF DVR is easy to use for the client and will be the most likely unit more so because it records 1/30 (1 frame every 30 secs) and because no one has suggested an alternative. Surprisingly the suppliers i have spoken to have been rather unhelpfull (except Dynamic) and in some cases have not even bothered to reply to my requests for help.

Thers still time to alter things which is why i was asking for help here.

Use an ordinary digital camera and a Digisnap 2000 controller.

http://www.harbortronics.com/

You can set the camera to a low resolution like 1200x800 and store a few thousand shots on the cameras memory card.

It is a lot easier to import single jpeg images into a video editor than to chop down video footage to make a time lapse video (I know 'cause i've tried it many times). Also the resolution and final video quality will be much higher than anything you will get from an analogue cctv camera.

example done with a digital camera here

or this one