I have recently become somewhat obsessed with time lapse images, and want to start making my own. I've got the gear required for it...but I'm unsure about software. I attempted to take a sequence last night of my chanukah candles burning...I have 2000 6MP JPEGs, and iMovie thinks it's going to take 7 hours to assemble them into a video. There has to be a faster way, right?

What software/workflow should I be looking into? I've got a Mac and a Linux machine, each of which have a decently fast CPU and 8GB of RAM. I already have Photoshop CS5 and the various software that comes with Snow Leopard, but I'm not opposed to spending a bit of money if I need to in order to get the right thing. I'm not looking to make super hi-res videos, but it would be nice if I can make long movies.

I use "Time Lapse Assembler", it's free and works great. I use it on my mbpro

That looks like what I'm looking for! I'll try it out tonight.

Quicktime pro has been a good option for some.

e.s.sandusky wrote:
I use "Time Lapse Assembler", it's free and works great. I use it on my mbpro

Time Lapse Assembler worked beautifully:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4f0gi7xNe0

Time to get a camera that is a little better at this sort of thing...

or http://lrtimelapse.com/

http://virtualdub.org/

Totally free and quite powerful. The interface is spartan, and there's a short-but-steep learning curve. Once you figure it out, you can add an entire directory of files (jpg, tiff, tga, etc.) and start to render a movie in about a minute. (Actual move encoding can obviously take much longer.)

Tutorials at

http://timelapseblog.com/2009/08/04/using-virtualdub-for-time-lapse/
and
http://www.spacelapse.net/en/Astrophotography_Tutorials/Convert_Single_Photos_to_a_Timelapse_Movie.html

You'll also need/want to download http://sourceforge.net/projects/x264vfw/
This will give you x264 encoding, one of the better video compression schemes around.

Both projects are open source and are free of add ware, viruses, and other junk.

Here's an early effort of mine. For some reason the Flikr version gets played back at half speed, giving it the stutters. The original is smooth.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/19806236@N00/7699186158/in/photostream

Great sunset Greg, How long did it take to make that movie, after the images were uploaded?

I don't recall exactly, but I think it was somewhere around 1 frame per second running on a 2GHz laptop. Any halfway modern desktop CPU will churn out many frames per second. Multiple cores help too.The incoming files were 8MP jpegs. The program did two x/2 size reductions, then some brightness/contrast tweaking, then some sharpening before adding the resultant frame to the film. (Adding filters and effects is VERY easy, and you can stack, order, disable/enable reach filter as needed.)

The only tricky part is that all the image files must be sequentially numbered. If shooting RAW, set your batch processor to start a new file name sequence like "File0001.xxx"
See also http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1175843/0#11208928

More than you ever wanted to know about time lapse photography!

http://forum.timescapes.org/phpBB3/index.php

That's a helpful site -- thanks, Greg!

I have possibly the worst workflow ever when it comes to time lapses. I import all into Lightroom where I make some color adjustments and then sync them all up. Then import them all into windows movie maker to just get it into a video format... Then it's into Sony Vegas for the final tweaking.

I'll definitely be checking out your resources

This is a time lapse I did with that workflow, http://youtube.com/watch?v=br3n4a9QKrE
Definitely not my best work, I actually play on the team so I set my camera up long before the game and just prayed it worked (hence some of the jumps in there)

Cool Peak.

+1 for Quicktime Pro.

It's super-easy, just use the "open image sequence" command and point to a folder with sequentially-numbered files. Save as a .mov and you're done, OR import into movie editing software of your choice.

One of my short timelapse videos, interlaced with stills, can be seen here.

Another for Quicktime Pro to assemble the TL.

I shoot my sequences in RAW (5DMKII or 5D or 40D), adjust in LR, export and assemble with QTP.
I edit the TL in FCPX where I add sound, text etc.

I initially did the lot in LR but I ended up with a better quality result using the above.

A couple of examples::
https://vimeo.com/45385086
https://vimeo.com/44567574

I've since added LRTimelapse 2 to my workflow to iron out the exposures in the evening/morning transitions, you use it with LR.

Cheers