How to do timelapse in ACR 13.1 from raws

[Ben Egbert]

I have a set of raw files I want to convert to timelapse. They are taken using the interval time in the camera. I have searched for a tutorial on this but they either start with LR which I don't use or have a third party program to do part of the work.

Any tips or tutorial would be of interest.

I am not sure how interested I am after researching this, as I can get automatic timelapses in camera. But I thought I would try to learn in just in case.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Look at this Ben. I’d suggest first converting the raw files into jpgs or tifs and then using the method outlined in the video. Make sure to size the images based on video resolution you want - 1080p or 4K.

 

[JimFox]

The reason to me to do it this way instead of as a total in camera movie timelapse is you can edit it. Whereas with the movie timelapse, besides being lower resolution you are stuck with it, and you aren't getting any high res stills from it. But from an ease of use point of view, in camera is the easiest.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jameel I just watched it. I will give it a go

 

[JimFox]

Ben, it's like 3 steps to do.

Here is the basic steps I copied from this longer link. Time-lapse photography tutorial in Photoshop - PhotoshopCAFE

PROCESSING
If you want to edit the images, open one in camera raw and make your adjustments. Save a preset. Go to Bridge and apply the preset by selecting all the images and right-clicking. Choose Develop Setting and choose your Preset, it will be applied to all the image. The other Option is to edit one of the images in Lightroom and them sync the settings to the other images.

In Photoshop, choose image>open navigate to your folder of images.

Choose the first image in the sequence only (don’t select all the images, or Photoshop will try to make a time-lapse sequence foreach of the images, and you will have a mess. )

Click the button at the bottom of the import dialog box that says “image sequence” (If the sequence is broken, the video shows how to repair the naming)

Click ok and select a frame-rate when prompted.

24|FPS is common for Cinema, what you see at the movies. 30|FPS is common for video and what you see on TV.

Open the Timeline (Window>Timeline) And press the spacebar of play button to view the time-lapse.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jim, I will try this one too.

Ok I tried this and followed all the steps but when I pressed the space bar, nothing happened. I tried to render it and all I got was a single frame. I was careful to only click the first image and then image sequence. I have guests coming so I will try again later.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Ok, Jameel, I got yours to work. The tutorial would not open yesterday so I tried Jim's. That method fails and I think it's because there were only 10 frames. Your method did but don't blink during playback, The tutorial was good to follow until I got to the frame rate setting and he was not clear on where to go to set it. No problem, you get another chance when you render.

I have mixed emotions here. The only reason I can see to use this method rather than the in Camera method it so you could use the frames for still images. But if I wanted to get a sunset progression, I would need several hundred 45mp images. Way too many. I think in reality I will do my time lapses in camera and my stills separately.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

What is your interval between shots? You do need a lot of frames to do a meaningful timelapse. If you want to do a 10 sec. video at 24 fps, this would need 240 shots. Depending on what you are shooting, the spacing between frames need to be adjusted. For sunset/sunrise, a 2s between exposures should work which gives you about 8 mins worth of action.

 

[Ben Egbert]

I set the time interval at 10 seconds and the frame rate likewise. 240 full size images is way more than I would like to deal with. Storage, post processing etc. I am going to play with 4k in camera and using picture styles in lieu of post processing.

 

[Ben Egbert]

I just did an in camera timelapse 300 at 3 sec, which is the default. I used 4k and set the picture style to landscape and it looks good.

 

[Jim Dockery]

Ben, 240 shots at 24 frames a second will give you just 10 sec. of video (which isn't much). Many of my time-lapses have between 600-900 frames (esp. night work). Yes, it does lead to huge folders and lots of processing time, although most of that is the computer churning away, not me doing anything. Other than having all the RAW images to pick from for individual processing (the #1 reason to go the RAW route) it is cool to export your jpgs much larger than the video res. you are going to use. This allows you to pan and zoom in most video editing software which really adds to many shots, making it look like you shot with a dolly track.

 

[Ben Egbert]

I can do in camera up to 8k,

 

[Jim Dockery]

8K will also work for the pan and zoom if you are outputing HD or even UHD, but of course you will loose your RAW stills. Some of my best star shots have come from night TL sessions. Here are two examples of Mt. Shuksan with the aurora.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Nice images, I will give it a try again. Tonight I did a long 1000 image in camera timeline of sunset with 3 second intervals and landscape picture setting. I will see if it fits here and post it later.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Here is the timelapse I did tonight

Utah Lake - YouTube

 

[AlanLichty]

Looks good full screen.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks for looking Alan.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Nice. Did you use a constant exposure throughout?

 

[Ben Egbert]

That's some really sweet twilight Ben! a really nice glow. I like the partly frozen look of the lake.

Did you get any tighter shots?

Nice. Did you use a constant exposure throughout?

I did not, I set the exposure to each frame and used one of the mountain faces as a target, Although the single I took afterwards is much brighter than the end of this sequence.

 

[Jim Dockery]

Looks good Ben. If you shot it at 8K try zooming into the center to add some movement. Not sure what you mean about setting the exposure to each frame, but I don't shoot Canon.