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Or, how to spend $1 million in just over 12 minutes (actually, about 3 1/2 days).

[CORRECTION: I previously had said $3 million, which is what I had heard on the streets. I've since been contacted by a representative of the SFMTA who assures me that the cost was in fact $1 million.]

This is a time-lapse video showing the replacement of the MUNI tracks in front of my house. Demolition began on the evening of Friday, October 8, and work continued around the clock until early in the morning of Tuesday, October 12. The MUNI folks were nice enough to distribute earplugs to those of us in the immediate vicinity.

This was shot using a Canon A590, with CHDK installed (a firmware replacement for Canon cameras that enables all sorts of additional features). An image was captured approximately every 15 seconds.
  • Cassidy Curtis 1 year ago
    Great stuff! Amazing to see how they work 'round the clock like that. I hope capturing this timelapse made it worth all the noise! :-)
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  • Daron Zhou 1 year ago
    Amazing selection of music. Could anyone tell me what's the second song that starts at the 2:36 mark?
  • Mark O'Russa 1 year ago
    Flim by Aphex Twin on the Come to Daddy EP.

    Thank my iPhone.
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  • this is awesome!!! we walked by it the other day!
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  • Carlos Oller 1 year ago
    really amazing video! music was great!
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  • Rick Macomber plus 1 year ago
    so... how many total images were imported into fcp?
  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    18,520 images. I actually used ffmpeg to assemble the movie in about 6 chunks, then pulled it together in iMovie.
  • Rick Macomber plus 1 year ago
    lots of work... very impressive!
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  • David C. Hill plus 1 year ago
    So very cool!!
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  • Sergio 1 year ago
    Fantastic! Quite a lot of work of the MUNI folks to do the track change and a lot of work from your part to deliver this video to us. Great work!
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  • Matty2x4 1 year ago
    Nice work!
    Did you shoot it with aperture priority for the exposures?
  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    Thanks! I actually left everything in fully automatic mode... this seemed to be the best way to deal with the wide variety of lighting conditions that would exist over the course of the shoot.
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  • König Josef 1 year ago
    pretty awesome!
    i love the transition between night and day. did you have to adjust the exposure in the evenings/mornings? i wonder how it works;-)
  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    thank you! see my reply above... I didn't do any adjustments at all over the course of the shoot. I just put it in auto mode. The camera seemed to do the "right thing," for the most part, but you can see how the white balance jumps around a little here and there.
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  • Dan Forsley 1 year ago
    Ken: Does time lapse have value other than entertainment? I'm sure it does but I can't put it into words. Could you?
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  • Niki Caligiuri 1 year ago
    Peeeeweeeee!!!!!
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  • nick o'neill 1 year ago
    Saw this last week as I ran past, thanks for letting me see the rest!
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  • Bo Gusman 1 year ago
    Would you please tell me the name of the first musical selection? Thanks!
  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    "The Breakfast Machine" by Danny Elfman (from the soundtrack to Pee Wee's Big Adventure)

    (sorry Mr. Elfman... it just fit so well!)
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  • vic 1 year ago
    Very interesting. These 3 days must have been pretty terrible for your ears :). Can you tell me the name of the music from 5:27 to 6:54 ? Thanks.
  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    The first night with the giant jackhammers was pretty insane, but it wasn't too bad after that.

    The song is "Hardest Geometry Problem in the World" by Mark Mothersbaugh (of Devo fame), from the Rushmore soundtrack.
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  • Noel Cornell 1 year ago
    Bravo!
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  • sigmonsays 1 year ago
    love the music. Each track fit the mood very well for the work being done.
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  • Amy Karoline 1 year ago
    Hey Ken! I live nearby, frequent the Cafe XO all the time, and I did some consulting work with a construction firm that probably did the welding on those rails ;) A friend sent me your video, it's awesome to see life in action like this! Amazing what humans can do... thanks for making and sharing, the music is excellent! Best, Amy
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  • Ripe, Inc. 1 year ago
    Thoroughly absorbing. Well done!
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  • Adam Kennedy 1 year ago
    This is incredible. I know that at some point at night I walked by, and took a left around the corner but I don't want to spend too much time trying to look for myself. Great time lapse.
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  • Ville Ryynänen 1 year ago
    that's awesome :D Could you tell me the name of the last song, please?
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  • Keary Larson 1 year ago
    Very Nice... I've always wondered how to do a time lapse video of a scene that changes lighting conditions. I didnt' see too much flickr resulting from Auto-White Balance either but I was expecting a ton of it.

    I'm going to have to try a cloud scene on a setting sun and shoot on Full Auto...
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  • Richard Bytheway 1 year ago
    How did you power the camera? I have tried to do similar time lapse things with CHDK and my camera (Ixus 80IS) only lasts 2-3 hours per charge.
  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    I used an external power supply... I found an aftermarket one that works with my cam for about $20
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  • Onno Filippo 1 year ago
    What's the last song called? (starting at around 11:25)
  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    "Piranas Are A Very Tricky Species" by Mark Mothersbaugh (from Devo), off the Rushmore Soundtrack
  • Onno Filippo 1 year ago
    Thnx :)

    It has nice rythm. (and makes me happy)
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  • Waltarrrrr 1 year ago
    Hooray! Well done. The noise must have been wonderful. The ubiquitous group of supervisors standing around doing nothing must have been just outside the frame.
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  • Russ McClay 1 year ago
    MUNI would probably like a copy of the video.
  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    They've seen it!
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  • Hughes Hall plus 1 year ago
    Love this. Makes me want to play with trains.
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  • Vincent H 1 year ago
    You HAVE to sell this company your movie...if I were them, I'll buy it right now!
    Excellent video
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  • Ville Ryynänen 1 year ago
    hey what's the name of the last song?
  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    "Piranas Are A Very Tricky Species" by Mark Mothersbaugh (from Devo), off the Rushmore Soundtrack
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  • Bravenewmalden 1 year ago
    Respect, also, to the people doing all the work.
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  • Ming Gu 1 year ago
    Ken, Is this for sell. I would like to buy it from you or download from the the website.
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  • Ville Ryynänen 1 year ago
    could you now please tell me the name of the last song please?!? :D
  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    "Piranas Are A Very Tricky Species" by Mark Mothersbaugh (from Devo), off the Rushmore Soundtrack
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  • Michael Kathke 1 year ago
    Very interesting. Around 0:35 until 0:40 you can see that an unused hydraulic arm goes slowly down like an LEGO pneumatic model. ;-)
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  • Patrick Coyle 1 year ago
    Ken, How did you manage the 18,520 images? Did you stop action to change to a new card with the CHDK script on it? Did you use an Eye-Fi wireless card to autoflow them off the card? It is a really great timelapse.
  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    I used a 2GB sd card and had to stop the action a few times (5 times actually) to dump the images. You can see the jumps but it doesn't really affect the flow of the movie too much. I do have a rig for shooting continuously for an indefinite amount of time (see my "History of the Sky" project: murphlab.com/hsky) but it's in use and a bit more complicated to set up. This MUNI video was very impromptu and using CHDK worked perfectly.
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  • Tom Myers 1 year ago
    Great video.

    There are some LCB track pieces in there that I don't recognize.
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  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    Thanks! What is "LCB"?
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  • Duke Koufax 1 year ago
    Bravo! I set out to watch a minute or so and did watch the entire thing... lots of cool stuff to think about while watching. I thought the break in the action at 11 minutes was like taking a deep breath!
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  • David Šigut 1 year ago
    Why did not create HD video? Not that it was a fundamental error:), the content is very interesting!
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  • Ken Murphy 1 year ago
    Good question... it came down to the fact that this was planned at the last minute, and I needed a relatively small image file size so that the camera's SD card wouldn't fill up too fast.
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  • Jason Stahl 1 year ago
    I'd love to see this video with a tilt-shift effect done to it. Along the lines of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_faking#Digital_postprocessing
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  • Jonathan Cipriano plus 1 year ago
    Watched it all the way through. Extremely interesting. Great choice of music, btw.
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  • Michael Sutton 11 months ago
    great job, very impressive, you've gotta love CHDK
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  • Moffett 11 months ago
    Ken, that is awesome. Nice of MUNI to provide earplugs.
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  • Valery-PP 8 months ago
    Good one
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