I’d like to capture video at a slow frame rate, say 1 frame per minute, using my laptop’s built in camera, or a USB webcam.
The idea is to put the camera where it’s got a view of a job site, so that a video can be made of the construction process. As the work takes a few days, I don’t want 20 or 30 hours of 25 FPS video. One frame every minute or so ought to work, plus make me look like I’m moving real fast.
Any recommendations for free or cheap software that will record a frame every so often into a video file? Or any hints or tricks?
Cheers all!
1 FPS would be 60 frames per minute. .017 FPS would yield your 1 frame per minute. Even then, though, an entire day would produce 1440 images. If you ran them back at 30 fps, it would take about 48 seconds to get through a single day’s work. Depending on how long your construction process lasts, this could mean a lengthy time-lapse video.
I’m not sure about software; the last webcam I used had software with it that would snap an image every so often and save it to a folder. If I wanted to time lapse those images, I could put them together in Windows Movie Maker (not the best option, but you asked for free/cheap) at whatever speed looked good.
Googling “free webcam time lapse software” brought up this page, among others.
Thanks for that. I’d been searching using “freeze frame” and “stop motion”, which brought up animation software.
I’ve fiddled with my laptop’s built-in webcam, hoping ASUS had included this feature, with no joy. I do have a Logitech webcam plugged into my desktop, but didn’t install its software. That’ll need further investigation to see if it’s software has the required feature.
I’d be looking at say 3 or so 8 hour days, so stitching together 1200 individual frames would require too much enthuisum on my part, so I don’t mind paying a bit for something that works out of the box.
The link you provided looks like there’s a couple of promising products, and anyway, you’ve given me a better search term, thanks!