Some Clarity: Interval Recording for Timelapse or no?

B

BrettHickman

Member
My hmc-150 is on its way to me right now from BH! Can't wait. However in many initial reviews I read it had interval recording capabilities, great for timelapse. However, I did find a thread on DVXUser stating it did not possess that function. Yes, I know it has the pre-record function providing 3 seconds cushion.. But does it have interval recording similar to the dvx100a and hpx170? I have heard conflicting answers to this.

Any help is greatly appreciated! :huh:
 
Simple answer: No it hasn't. Hower you can record 4 hours on a single 16gb SDHC card and do it in post.
 
Its the only thing I really really miss about the HVX. Having the real individual frames makes a big different in the quality of the timelapse.. as well as the data requriments, and also the ability to offer it as a service. I got work last year specifically because it was a real timelapse. Speed up video is a giant blend and I don't think it looks very good at all.
 
Justyn, I've only played a bit with timelapse, and using Vegas here, but I've used undersampling to get that timelapse effect without the blending (or smearing).

Justyn said:
Its the only thing I really really miss about the HVX. Having the real individual frames makes a big different in the quality of the timelapse.. as well as the data requriments, and also the ability to offer it as a service. I got work last year specifically because it was a real timelapse. Speed up video is a giant blend and I don't think it looks very good at all.
Click to expand...
 
This might be a dumb question as I don't exactly know how an NLE works with sped up progressive footage.

I will be dealing with a fair share of time lapses (2-5 seconds each) since I will be doing a lot of shooting in the mountains.. Say I record some rolling fog for 15 minutes at 24p 1/15th shutter. Then I export that as a TIFF sequence in one folder and copy every 10th frame into another folder. I then put this back into my editor and play it back at 24p again. Essentially, I will have 1000% speed timelapse, but will I still have that "sped up video look" that we are trying to avoid?

I know this is extremely time consuming, but I obviously didn't buy this camera for it's workflow. ;)
 
Justyn said:
Speed up video is a giant blend and I don't think it looks very good at all.
Click to expand...

Not to mention taking up the exploded file size from 16 GBs of HD footage on a single time lapse shot isn't quite... desirable.

Personally pretty surprised we don't have a simple time lapse in camera, maybe my biggest grudge with the HMC150.
 
seven.b,

If you try this, please upload something to show us all, maybe along with the original simply just sped up without frames dropped. Quite the workflow indeed, love to see it or a simple test run before you hit the mountain.
 
I just did a quick test and FCP deals with sped up footage in exactly the same way a tiff sequence would. I looked at it frame by frame. When you export as image sequence in FCP you can choose any framerate you want. I exported a TIF sequence at 2fps on a ~100 second clip. So I had 202 TIF files in a folder which would result to about a 1200% speed increase. This whole process is actually very easy and quicker than I thought. With this little workaround we essentially can have several framerates from 1-30p. From what I recall, the HMC-150 can do a 1/15 shutter and the HVX can do a 1/12 shutter. So there is not much difference there.

This brings up an interesting question. Keeping all workflow issues aside, what exactly is the difference between this method and the HVX's undercranking?

Thanks.
 
Last edited:
By the way, my camera is in the mail so that is why I can't test it just yet.

Now that I'm thinking about it, it'd have to be a factor of whatever mode you shot the timelapse in. Say you shot a timelapse in 24p, using this method you could get 1p, 2p, 4p, 6p, 8p and 12p.
 
Last edited:
bump, basically trying to understand the difference between using this method and the HVX200. Is the HVX200's better for some reason that I'm completely missing?
 
seven.b said:
yeah man, what were your settings
Click to expand...

I recorded the scene for two hours and transcoded the footage so I could edit it in Final Cut Pro (this results in VERY large files, but you can delete them after your time lapse is rendered).
The footage was recorded in 1080i but I wanted to have 720p, so I deinterlaced and scaled the footage down to 720p with Compressor.
Then I imported the 720p footage into FCP and sped it up by a few thousand percent and disabled the "frame blend" option in the speed menu. Render. Export. Done.
 
Last edited:
pailes said:
I recorded the scene for two hours and transcoded the footage so I could edit it in Final Cut Pro (this results in VERY large files, but you can delete them after your time lapse is rendered).
The footage was recorded in 1080i but I wanted to have 720p, so I deinterlaced and scaled the footage down to 720p with Compressor.
Then I imported the 720p footage into FCP and sped it up by a few thousand percent and disabled the "frame blend" option in the speed menu. Render. Export. Done.
Click to expand...

thanks! do you happen to remember your shutter speed? i've heard a longer shutter is better for this type of shooting.
 
seven.b said:
thanks! do you happen to remember your shutter speed? i've heard a longer shutter is better for this type of shooting.
Click to expand...

As far as I can remember this was shot with shutter turned off, it was my first test after all.
Since short shutter times result in clearer still images I think this would still work out.
I would recommend just experiment a little and find out what settings are best for you.
 
Wow... That is a nice timelapse. The biggest difference from this type of timelapse proceedure to the one on the P2 side, is that on the P2 side you would be importing only a 2 minute clip. One solid already done 2 minutes. There's no large files, nothing to conform and speed up and you are done right then and there, and can watch it the moment you are done shooting. Also there are discrete frames and not a speed up process.


For example. I had a job last year which was to timelapse the Orlando courthouse lobby, elevators, and escalators to analyze the flow of people during peek times, and to see how much traffic these eleveators and such can handle. Well, they tried it once before us, doing this shoot and then speed up process and what they got were in-between frames and blends so they couldn't count the people and truly tell what was going on. Now with my timelapse they could go through frame by frame and count the people and or whatever they did. It was much more precise and scientific and easier to deal with. IF I did this speed up process I would have had 24 hours of footage x 3 cameras ... so that's 72 hours of footage. Instead what they got were 3x30 minute finished versions. That's what they wanted. A 10 minute timelapse from each camera over the 3 days.



BUT... here's the good deal, If we want to do this, then we could all just buy a nice DSLR. The quality is better than what we can get off the 150, 200 or 170 and it wouldn't cost too much at all. Less than the price of the upgrade to the P2. That's why I don't really care that much, I could just do it with a still cam and an intervelometer and then with all that rez, I could do some motion moves on the shot and do something really cool.


cheers for showing this. Looks wonderful, but it is a bit more work than just a DSLR set of stills or a P2 timelapse.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top