Advice on "fast video"

[thouts]

So i'm not sure what to call this technique...i'm sure there is a proper name for it. But what I'd like to do is tape sign installers putting up a sign. Then I want to take all the footage and compress it/speed it up into a couple minutes to show the process really quickly. This could take more than an hour...problem is...my miniDV tapes are only an hour long. What is the best way to do this? With two tapes or more? Just putting a new one in when the old one runs out of tape?

Anyone know any other methods to this?

[oculus42]

You can record directly to your hard disk if your camera has a FireWire port, thus eliminating the tape swapping. Of course, this requires your camera *and* computer hang out for a few hours.

[macfaninpdx]

I believe you're thinking of time lapse filming. You will need either a camera or software on the computer that can control your camera that supports it. If you want one hour of footage to end up as 2 minutes, set it to capture 1 frame per second (thirty times faster than 30 fps).

There are also ways to speed it up on the computer if you record at normal time, but you would still not be able to overcome the 1 hour limit unless you record at a lower quality.

[anthemus]

Your doing a time-lapse. Changing speed of the frame rate is called under-cranking or over-cranking.

Here's a quick link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-lapse

Check out an app: http://gawker.sourceforge.net/Download.html

Didn't launch on Snow Leopard.

[Sonicjay]

Depending on whether or not you need any features of an actual camcorder or not (zoom, white balance, etc), you can just open iMovie and capture video directly from the built in iSight on your MBP. Time-wise, you should basically be able to go until you fill the hard drive. If you go the MiniDV to tape route, you'll find it's very difficult to keep the camera in the exact same position after a tape change, which could be an abrupt shift in your footage. As stated above though, you could just connect the vidoe cam via firewire with no tape in it, and capture the live feed (a lot cams shut off after x amount of minutes if there's a tape in them) right to the hard drive or external drive.

[evil_santa]

there is a bit of software called istopmotion , i think one of its feature is to record time lapes off a camera attached via firewire,

[jampat]

Photography may be an easier approach here than speeding up a video. Capturing for an hour and then reducing that to two minutes, you only keep 3% of the frames. If you capture an image a second, then play them back at 25 or 30fps, you should get what you want with minimal storage or computer power. The results of this should be really close to capturing everything and then reducing the frames shown.

EDIT: I see you have a D60. There should be software you can use to drive the camera in tethered mode if you have don't have an intervalometer (time lapse control).

[Flynnstone]

I just did this last night.
I have a Sony TRV33 handi cam.
It lets you do interval recording. I did 1 second every minute.
I have a Black & Decker power monitor. I wanted to see how power I use during a day. Poor mans power logger !
Works well. 24 hrs real time ~= 1/2 hr of miniDV tape.

[xStep]

there is a bit of software called istopmotion , i think one of its feature is to record time lapes off a camera attached via firewire,

Worked great for my time lapse driving video (http://www.vimeo.com/reely).

See this Macworld thread (http://forums.macworld.com/index.php?/topic/115082-make-a-time-lapse-video/) also. Someone thought I explained some issues well.

One thing to note regarding using a still camera. If it has a mechanical shutter, you are NOT encouraged to use it. They have a limited shutter life and you can go through it quick with time lapse photos.