Man, thanks!!! This is a GREAT tut. I just started making time-lapse and this is just what I needed to start understanding AE a little more. Thanks Again!!

good one man. i dig the little Terminal trick at the end. i usually use the BG Renderer GUI but this is way more OG. i do love my Lightroom though, i've only been using it for a month or so but it's becoming hard to figure out what i was doing without it.

Nice tip for GH2 owners might work on other cameras just read the comments. Set GH2 into burst mode so you do not use the mechanical shutter

4k Lumix GH2 sky timelapse

vimeo.com/27450048

Great info.....thanks. One thing I'm not quite clear about is that you set the exposure on the camera at f8 and 1/80th, and on the intervalometer you set the exposure time for 1 second. How do the two settings tie up ?

Hope you get time to reply.

Most Excellent! Thanks for sharing. Although this was mostly a timelapse tutorial, personally, the part I enjoyed the most was when you explained how to render out of AE by using Terminal. I wasn't aware this method existed, and I have to admit that I learned this from you. Good work.

Thanks for getting back to me...all is clear !!

So for the terminal method, is there any reason that this is specific to mac?

I searched for the documentation on this and noticed that it references windows as well for usage using the aerender.

help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS8A8CD670-4A72-4fb5-AE8E-CB9E232EC0B5a.html

So I'm hoping this can also be done on a Windows PC using DOS or if it requires a UNIX environment, then a shell emulator like cygwin should work.

nice work mate!

even tho' i'm not that much of an timelapse shooter .... it was very informative ... now i understand what my buddies from T_Recs are doing all day in post ;)

Tom fantastic tutorial. I am just starting to get into TL. one thing where do you apply the motion or movement on the 5K image? its that on FCP?

Tom also Can I use Lightroom instead of Adobe Bridge?

Really informative, and so much more professional than the assemble-jpgs-in-Quicktime-Pro method! Thanks Tom!

Great video pres, but some info is slightly wrong: why gaffer tape or live view for timelapse? How about simply using the built in mirror lock? It is on all but the very low end EOS cameras, prevents camera shake and light entering the VF; it is designed for the job!

Capture One will do a better job on the RAW processing than Lightroom or Aperture (more accurate colour + better if slightly more complex / professional workflow). Rather than grading the finished film, much if not all the colour correction is done on the RAW files before output. Working on a big group of images is not hard in a decent RAW processor

Cheers Tom. Drop me a Dm if you want help with Capture One (C1).

One other thought - Colour management: Canon DSLRs need to be set to shoot in sRGB (I don't think this was in the video) and any RAW output from Lightroom / Photoshop / Aperture / C1 etc must be in the sRGB colour space. Many photographers naturally shoot and process their files into Adobe RGB and the results, certainly in FCP 7, are desaturated and nasty looking. FCP assumes stills are in Rec709 which is the same as sRGB, clipped to 16 and 235

Great video, but what about using the QuickTime method, as i don't have adobe bridge and after effects. ive always found that works for me

as you know adobe after effects doesn't come cheap for someone starting out in timelapse videos what else could you suggest for reading raw files?

Hi Tom,

Great tutorial! I have been wondering for so long why on earth people choose to limit themselves by shooting JPEG instead of RAW. Sure, it saves on memory space, but it soooo much limits your options in post...

Again, this is really good stuff: I even learned a few new tricks.

However, here are a few suggestions from my end: With regards to applying the development settings to all the photos, I believe there's a shortcut. If you open the first frame in AE as a RAW sequence, AE opens the RAW dialogue (as you showed in the tutorial). After adjusting the settings there, AE applies those to all the pictures in the sequence, so there's no need to copy all development settings to all the other pictures.

Nonetheless, your method may be preferred whenever you want to adjust the RAW settings at a frame that is more representative of the timelapse than the first frame. For example, if this is the middle frame, you can copy development settings to all other pictures before importing them to AE. Too bad AE does not allow for keyframing of these parameters. Nice to know that LRTimelapse does...

I mainly use Bridge for the Stack pictures option. This will allow you to preview the timelapse without rendering it out or importing it into AE. You may need to use the option Tools > Cache > Build and Export Cache beforehand to speed up the ability to view the individual pictures (this process takes a while, so you can have a break or working on sth else in between).

Keep up the good work!

how can i convert this into a compatible format? (not aep)

Hey, awesome tutorial. Why do you use ProRes 422HQ instead of for an example h264? I have the ProRes codecs, but i've never tried them, so i'm curious to know the advantages of this codec.

thanks for this dude. I'm just getting into timelapse. Shot bunch of stuff on my Singapore strip last week. You rock!

Great video, Tom. What technique do you recommend for adjusting exposure during the timelapse shoot? For instance, how would you adjust exposure gradually and evenly for a sunset timelapse?

Great stuff man, thanks. This will definitely be usefull to step up the quality of my timelapses in the future. I have one on my profile right now that's getting a lot of views even though i still want to reprocess it to get rid of some flickr (only at transitions weird enough, something happened in fcp i guess)
Keep up the awesome work!!

Gather tape? Don't the canon camera have a rubber viewfinder cover on the camera strap? flickr.com/photos/hpulley/4830737083/

great tutorial but i am not so sure that 16, 18 mp jpegs even 6 or 8mp straight from the cam are not enough for an amazing detailed 2mp video

and jpegs can also be fine tuned

raw is essential if bad settings on camera

with lrtimelapse and jpegs i have created amazing quality timelapse

jpegs 3,5mp at basic quality
they are more than enough for 2mp video and can offer slight crop capability
if you want more crop then use 6mp or more

also sraw is an option

2hr rendering? wow thats long but at least you are till the very end with raw files.

you could at least offer a zooming effect in video so as to gain from the full size raw. the timelapse you created doesnt show the potential of raw & full size resolution files

Great stuff, thanks, I have done a few sunset time lapses with different degrees of success, this gets me a lot further down the road.

A couple of questions.
1) Why do you limit the exposure time to 1/100, does sharpness of say 1/250 hurt the end product by being too sharp?

2) What advantage is rendering in Terminal give you then doing it from within AE?

Great tutorial TOM! Big appreciated to made time for this.

excellent tutorial Tom, just what I need to get some of my first proper quality timelapse :)

This is the best timelapse tutorial around the net thanks for sharing your knowledge