isimSoftware Time Lapser

Time Lapser is an application that allows you to combine a directory full of JPEG images into an AVI file playable by most media players, or uploadable to video sharing sites like YouTube or Vimeo. It also allows you to overlay images and/or text on top of the video frames.

Time Lapser

Copyright © 2022 Isim Software. All Rights Reserved.

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Usage

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Time Lapser is an application to take a large quantity of JPEG images and

combine them into an AVI file playable by most video players.

Using Time Lapser is pretty easy and straight forward. To get started, find

your collection of JPEG images and what directory they live in. One thing to

note is that all of the JPEG images need to be the same size. You can verify

the size of all frames by choosing the menu option Edit->Verify Frames. When

you load them from a directory, the frames will be read in alphabetical order.

This means, for example, if you have a snapshot every 10 minutes from a 

webcam, and each is labeled like "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.jpg", i.e.

"2014-11-01 15:50.jpg", then they will load in chronological order. You can't

reorder the frames within the application, so this will need to be done before

starting with Time Lapser. Also, the images must be in JPEG format.

Once you have your images prepared and know where they are located, you will

click either the Edit->Select Image Directory... menu option or click the big

button in the bottom left corner of the application. This will let you browse

to the directory containing your files. Select the directory and click OK.

From there, the images will load into the list to the left side of the

application. At this point, you can click each frame to preview it, or use

the scrub bar underneath the preview image to quickly navigate through the

video frames.

If there are frames in the application that you don't want, select each one

and click the Drop Frame button or the Edit->Drop Frame menu item. If you

uncheck the box below the Drop Frame button, it will not ask you to confirm

each time you remove a frame, since it gets annoying when you have to remove

a lot of frames for some reason.

If you find you accidentally removed a frame you want, you can click Edit->

Insert Frame... to put it back. Just figure out which frame is missing and

select it with the file chooser.

At this stage, you can create a video file by clicking File->Export Video. By

default the video is uncompressed, but this will get to be VERY large. It is

recommended that you use a codec that is supported by Video for Windows (VFW).

I suggest x264vfw, which you can download from here:

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Time Lapser has a few advanced features. Below is a quick rundown of what else

it can do:

Duplicate a frame x times: Edit->Duplicate Frame.

Overlay Images: Edit->Overlay...->Add Image

  Drag the image around the preview area to place it where you want.

Overlay Text: Edit->Overlay...->Add Text

  You can customize the text by double clicking it once it appears on the

  video preview frame. Drag it around to place it where you want the text.

Playback the video before exporting it. Depending on your hard drive, this

may or may not play back at the framerate specified in the selector. Once the

video is exported, it will actually be rendered at the framerate specified.

Any other questions should be directed to me via the contact page on the web-

site, http://www.isimsoftware.com/ If you experience any kind

of crash or other weird issue, please let me know!

Thanks for using my free software! I hope it helped you accomplish what you

needed to get done.