Timelapse

I have to apolgize for the quality. I had a problem with how the program, webcam, handled the final image; it would offset the image by 30-50%, and in the end the only real solution I could come up with was to forcibly crop the image. I can’t give you any real why for the cropping right now, beyond to say that a thorough search of Google didn’t turn up anything remotely similar happening to anybody else.

After tonight’s 091 Labs meeting, somebody (sorry I’m terrible with names) was showing off a brief timelapse video taken during the course of the meeting. Inspired by it I set out to see if I could do the same myself, entirely in Linux and using commandline tools. In all? Three hours. Not too bad. I now (with some blatant theft from here) have a workable timelapse program I can pop up in a window somewhere and set loose.

HOWTO

1. Get webcam. apt-get webcam will work if you’re under Ubuntu.
2. Grab this configuration file. Save it as ~/.webcamrc.
3. mkdir -m ~/webcam/.tmp
4. Run webcam 2> /dev/null to test (it spits out a bunch of error messages for me, but works just fine anyways). Does it work? GOTO 5
5. cd webcam and look for a JPG file. It should have a file name close to img-2010-07-14-01-29-08.jpg. Stop. Evaluate. Does it look okay?
6. Yeah? Great. Download this script. It is, very simply, this:
   
#!/bin/bash
while [ 1 ]
do
webcam 2> /dev/null/
sleep 1
done
exit 0

   
7. chmod +x timelapse. Then run it, really, for however long you want it to run. In the video above I had it run for approximately 30 minutes at 1 frame every two seconds. Ctrl+z when you want it to finish.
8. cd webcam and ls -1tr > images.txt. If you don’t already have it, install mencoder and GOTO 9
9. mencoder -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -o timelapse.avi -mf type=jpeg:fps=20 mf://@images.txt
10. mplayer timelapse.avi. Enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done. :)

1 month ago  /  0 notes  /  Comments