Time-lapse Post-processing Workflows

Timelapse Post-processing – Photos to Video using the Adobe Workflow on Vimeo.

Shooting a series of photos is only half of the job of creating amazing timelapse films.  The other part is taking all those photos and creating a movie from them.   There are a myriad of workflows out there using free to expensive software for basic to advanced users.   In this video we show one professional workflow using Adobe Bridge, Camera Raw and After Effects.    For those of you who don’t own these programs, free 30 day trials can be downloaded from Adobe.com.

As an open-source hardware company we also want to provide you with information on alternative workflows using inexpensive or free and open-source software. Below we’ll break down some of these options and give links to the software and relevant time-lapse tutorials:

FREE
PhotoLapse
PhotoLapse is a freeware jpg to avi convertor for creating time-lapses.

Timelapse Assembler
Timelapse assembler is donationware for Mac OSX 10.6 or higher.

TimeLapseTool
TimeLapseTool is a free program for creating time-lapses for Windows.

Virtual Dub
A free editing program for Windows.

•   A French tutorial, English speakers might be able to glean some info from : http://vimeo.com/2644888

iMovie
iMovie is free for Mac users.

• Tutorial showing an iMovie ‘11 time-lapse workflow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHYtonER4VM&feature=related

INEXPENSIVE
Quicktime Pro
One of the simplest and most popular quick workflows.

• A rather young video maker shows a brief Quicktime time-lapse workflow here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcYBMK0aweM
• F-Stop Academy and Phillip Bloom's tutorial using Quicktime Pro to create a time-lapse and use Final Cut Pro to create key-framed moves: http://vimeo.com/7127489
• Enrique Pacheco shares his Lightroom and Quicktime Pro workflow: http://www.enriquepacheco.com/developing-time-lapse
  

Adobe Premiere Elements
An inexpensive version of Premiere. We couldn’t find a time-lapse tutorial, but it should just be a matter of importing an image sequence.

EXPENSIVE
Lightroom
Light room can be used to create time-lapses using templates.  You can download some of these templates here:http://lrtimelapse.com/download/

• This tutorial breaks down a standard Lightroom time-lapse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piTbWdeNWaA
• A more advanced and very interesting workflow can be achieved using a free program called LRTimelapse.   With LRTimelapse you can change all of the RAW develop settings over time with key-frames.  This gives you a great amount of control over adjustments and you don’t need Lightroom, this can be used as a part of many different workflows, including the one in our video above.

Adobe Premiere
Compiling time-lapse using only Premiere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI9b7s6MvQg

Final Cut Pro
A quick method to create a time-lapse straight in Final Cut Pro 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-BSTJxKyPk

Sony Vegas Pro
Using Sony Vegas to create your time-lapse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiNe8tEalGY

Each of these workflows can take some time to perfect,  but through practice, patience and experimentation you’ll find a comfortable work-flow to create beautiful time-lapses.  Have other work-flows that you want to share?  Let us know in the comments below!