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Reload this Page HowTo: Timalapse movie
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By ////// at 2009-07-13 06:58
In this tutorial I quickly show how you can make timelapse movies.

1.

First you need nice webcam where you can download pictures.
Here is couple of Google searches that I use when I'm looking for cameras.

Google image search: /record/current.jpg
http://images.google.com/images?hl=e...gbv=2&aq=f&oq=

Google image search: intext:"Shift-Reload to Refresh Image"
http://images.google.com/images?imgs...alvPmdCQ&gbv=2

2.

Next you need some kind of dl script that downloads pictures from webcams.
http://www.rootsecure.net/content/do...downloader.txt
Code:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# loader.pl

$count=1;
while ($count<10000) {

    ##########Date/Time
    ( $s,$m,$h,$mday ) = localtime( time ); 
    if( $s <  10 ) { $s = "0$s" } 
    if( $m  <  10 ) { $m  = "0$m" } 
    if( $h  <  10 ) { $h  = "0$h" } 
    if( $mday <  10 ) { $mday = "0$mday" } 
 
    $date_time = "$mday~$h-$m-$s";
    ##########Date/Time

    system("lwp-download http://80.33.241.154/jpg/1/image.jpg /path/to/your/imagefolder/$date_time.jpg"); 
    sleep 60; # be polite and use reasonable time values ;)

    $count++;
}
3.

Just choose a cam you like and start loader.pl.
Code:
"perl /usr/bin/loader.pl&"
go to sleep, after a (about)thousand pictures you are ready to make your movie, it is simple.
just cd into your imagefolder and use mencoder to make your movie.
Code:
	
cd /path/to/your/imagefolder
mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=10 -o test.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4v2:vbitrate=800
Thats it.

Here is rather boring timelapse movie made from 996 pictures.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jafjX3D9v9c

sources:
http://www.rootsecure.net/content/downloads/perl_scripts
http://electron.mit.edu/~gsteele/ffmpeg/
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by pwc101 on Mon, 2009-07-27 14:41
Thanks for the idea!

I wrote a simple bash script to grab the images and save them with the time and date:
Code:
#!/bin/bash

if [ \! -d $HOME/logs/webcams/soton/ ]; then
   mkdir $HOME/logs/webcams/soton/
fi
cd $HOME/logs/webcams/soton/

while true; do
   DATE=$(date "+%y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%s")
   wget --timeout=15 --quiet -nd -np \
   http://www.southampton.gov.uk/webcamimages/largesize.jpg && \
   mv largesize.jpg soton_high_street_${DATE}.jpg
   sleep 900; # be polite and use reasonable time values ;)
done
I'm looking into how to do this with my own USB webcam - I should think it's possible to grab an image from it relatively easily and it'd make an interesting video to see how we move around the flat

by ////// on Tue, 2009-09-29 07:10
I'm glad you find this tut useful, did you manage to make your own movie from your webcam ?

by pwc101 on Tue, 2009-09-29 07:34
In the end, I didn't.

I found a program called grabby that would take a single image from a webcam and then store it in a particular folder, but I only managed to get it to compile on Slackware after I contacted the author and he provided me with a few patches. Even then, after it successfully compiled, it wouldn't get the images from my webcam, so I gave up.



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