Full Moon Rise in Fullerton

[JimFox]

This was one of those last minute ideas 2 days ago. Thank goodness they don't still have food samples at Costco (where I had been) or I would never have gotten there in time at all

Another work in progress, I see plenty to improve for next time but I like the general idea of timelapse with a rising moon. This was done in Fullerton California in a little remote wilderness area stuck in the middle of SoCal.

I used 3 cameras all set to in camera timelapse with 1 sec intervals. The wider shot was increased in speed in Movavi, the tighter shots I slowed time in Movavi. All of the clips were edited for shadows, colors, contrast etc in Photoshop which is still the biggest time hog since it takes Photoshop 45 mins or more to save every clip. I had to shoot these darker because of the sky being kind of bright and I didn't want to blow highlights, and I know I can edit the clips in Camera Raw inside of Photoshop. Photoshop is so great at editing the clips, very powerful since you have so many tools available. It's just a shame it takes so incredibly long.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

Please Like and Share the Video - So click on the Youtube icon at the bottom of the video to view it in Youtube.

4k

 

[Ben Egbert]

Hey Jim, this is really neat. What transitions are you using?

Question on Photoshop editing of TL clips. I tried one yesterday and the edits only worked on the frame that was visible. Is there a selection you need to do to get the entire clip to accept the changes? This was with 4k clips.

 

[JimFox]

Glad you liked it Ben. I only use the CrossFade in the Fade section and the Zoom in or Zoom out in the Zoom section of the Tranisitions in Movavi. I think it's important to try and make the transitions as seamless as possible. No twisting of the screen, flipping the screen, etc because I think we want our transitions to almost appear like it's all coming from one camera that we are then zooming in or out with.

I was going to do a tutorial on how to to edit the whole video clip in Photoshop but last week I must have misunderstood you as it sounded like you knew how to do it, so I didn't say anything more.

Here is the short of it, and it's really simple.

1. Load the video timelapse (or regular video) into Photoshop

2. In the Layer Window you will see the Video
- You will see where it says Video Group 1
- Below it says Layer 1 with a thumbnail of the clip

3. Right click on that Layer 1 in the Layer Window

4. A popup menu comes up, click on "Convert to Smart Object"

5. Immediately you will notice the clip in the Timeline at the bottom turned from being colored blue to now it's Purple

6. Click on the Filter Menu and click on the "Camera Raw Filter"

7. Do your edits, they are applied to the whole video clip.

- Note 1: If you click Save and then save it, the default is then as a .psd file since it's only saving the frame that's showing in the window.

- Note 2: When you Render the video (through Export under the File Menu or clicking on the box in the upper right corner of the timeline) that is how all of the changes get saved to the whole clip.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jim. I was skipping the smart object step and seeing my changes, but they were subtle so I did not notice later that only the first frame was effected. I had one last night that needed a full stop exposure increase and that's when the first frame issue showed up. I just tried using smart object and it worked fine other than a slow export. I did try Topaz which works on the open frame, but if you ty to export it, the Topaz window open for the next frame. So either you need to select the Topaz actions inside Topaz, or if it does it automatically, it still looks like it needs to do each frame. Way to much time so I stopped it.

I am on my second render from Photoshop as I type.

By cross fade which I have used, the left to right seems best. I have also used the zoom in zoom out which is probably good when merging frames with different exposures.

I have been practicing techniques for shooting and processing. One is to shoot 200 or so frames then change the exposure by 1/3 stop and shoot another 200 etc. The idea here is to avoid the constant brightness of a scene that should get darker or lighter. These can be linked with a zoom in and out transition which masks the change.

One other question. Movavi says you can save a title to a favorites folder or some such, but does not tell you how. I googled it and went to the help area but nothing is said about how to do the save.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Ben, a quick note about saving your modified titles, up at the top where the “T” button and other buttons are when you are editing a Title there are like 4 boxes up there, the one on the right (if I remember) lets you save the Title. That puts it into your folder.

 

[AlanLichty]

Curious to follow the moon rising through the frame and then showing up at the bottom again. My only nit is that for these sequences there is no real point of reference relative to the ground - just the moon moving through the frame with clouds that are moving as well.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jim, I have it.

 

[JimFox]

Curious to follow the moon rising through the frame and then showing up at the bottom again. My only nit is that for these sequences there is no real point of reference relative to the ground - just the moon moving through the frame with clouds that are moving as well.

Thanks Alan, I appreciate your thoughts. I don't think your nit can be fixed though... unless you want to nit a scarf.

One of the things I enjoyed was the tight shots of the moon showing more detail. And of course then there can't be any point of reference if I am going in tight. If I had gotten it as it rose above the horizon, I could have gotten the ground in the shot, but it would have only lasted about 10 seconds and then the moon would be too far above the ground to be included in the image. That's why I started wide to anchor the moon and then went in tighter.

To your point perhaps, had there not been so many clouds that came in pretty quick as you can see by the wide ending timelapse where the viewer is once again able to place the moon, the sky had gotten pretty cloudy, I would have gone from wide to in tight several times during the timelapse. But I couldn't because within about 15 seconds the moon was gone for a while, so that made the perfect point to go in tighter with footage still showing the moon behind the moving clouds.

 

[AlanLichty]

Thanks Alan, I appreciate your thoughts. I don't think your nit can be fixed though... unless you want to nit a scarf.

One of the things I enjoyed was the tight shots of the moon showing more detail. And of course then there can't be any point of reference if I am going in tight. If I had gotten it as it rose above the horizon, I could have gotten the ground in the shot, but it would have only lasted about 10 seconds and then the moon would be too far above the ground to be included in the image. That's why I started wide to anchor the moon and then went in tighter.

To your point perhaps, had there not been so many clouds that came in pretty quick as you can see by the wide ending timelapse where the viewer is once again able to place the moon, the sky had gotten pretty cloudy, I would have gone from wide to in tight several times during the timelapse. But I couldn't because within about 15 seconds the moon was gone for a while, so that made the perfect point to go in tighter with footage still showing the moon behind the moving clouds.

It was more a passing comment rather than a useful suggestion on what you could have done differently. Short of a portrait orientation it's hard to keep the moon in the frame along with the ground for a TL and especially if you want to zoom in on the moon. I have honestly never considered the task of how to frame the moon for a closeup TL.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

That looks great, Jim. You have just the right time lapses so it looks smooth.

 

[JimFox]

It was more a passing comment rather than a useful suggestion on what you could have done differently. Short of a portrait orientation it's hard to keep the moon in the frame along with the ground for a TL and especially if you want to zoom in on the moon. I have honestly never considered the task of how to frame the moon for a closeup TL.

Gotcha. I misunderstood you.

I hope next time I can catch the moon as it breaks the horizon.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Very fun, and the video lead in to the time-lapse portion is a nice touch. This next comment is likely dumb, as music is always so subjective, but even though I like jazz the music selection did not seem like the best match to the video to me. I did like the 3 different focal length takes on the scene, that seemed to work pretty well.

ML

 

[JimFox]

Very fun, and the video lead in to the time-lapse portion is a nice touch. This next comment is likely dumb, as music is always so subjective, but even though I like jazz the music selection did not seem like the best match to the video to me. I did like the 3 different focal length takes on the scene, that seemed to work pretty well.

ML

Thanks so much Mike, I appreciate that.

Yeah, music is the part that's subjective. I have some music that I really like, but I don't really want all of my video's sounding the exact same way. Maybe that's okay. So anyway, I have a bunch of music I am playing with, so it happened to be a Jazz night I guess.