Nature Notes

I was thinking about making a video which involves parts of a timelapse and real time video in the same frame and did a test to see what the potential problems would be.

I picked the beach scene because it would show the nice fluffy clouds racing by and the people below moving at regular speed. The open horizon should allow for an easy place to transition the different video elements.

The editing procedure was as follows:

Using a tripod, Canon 5d2 in sRAW2, the smallest dimensions it shoots in, and an intervalometer, I took three hundred images of the beach scene, and then, being careful not to move the camera, a regular HD1080 video.

In Lightroom,  a couple of dustspots were removed and the resulting 2784 X 1856 px files were exported to a new directory as JPGs.

An action was created in Photoshop to change the image size to match the frame size of the regular video (1920 X 1080 px). This involved changing the width to 1920 and keeping the same proportions, resulting in an image of 1920 X 1220 px. I then changed the canvas size by -200 width which took a hundred pixels off the top as well as the bottom of the frame and gave me the 1920 X 1080 px dimensions I needed.

The images were brought into after effects as a sequence at 30 images a second, and the regular Hd video was brought in as a layer. A mask was created on the timelapse layer covering everything but the sky, using the pen tool, which allowed the beach and water of the regular video to show. The timelapse layer was adjusted so that the exposure matched and the video was rendered.

This was just a quick and easy test but I feel confident that a more ambitious and hopefully more interesting hybrid video is within my capabilities.

All Images are Available for Licensing at Singular Video&Pix