It Only Takes A Minute

…To set up a camera on timelapse.

Okay, maybe a few minutes, since I plugged the Go Pro via USB into a portable battery that would keep it charged and recording for the duration. Then I connected to the “Capture” GoPro app on my phone to position it just right.

Since I was planning on possible cropping and panning I decided to use Photo mode. This gave me a 4×3 frame with lots of extra pixels I could crop in on without losing quality since I only needed 1920×1080 of them versus over 5000 wide.

Sometimes I prefer shooting video then just speed it up hundreds of percentages for smoother motion on frame changes. Vehicle-driving timelapse videos benefit from this in my opinion. I don’t mind the jerkier stop-frame animation look, but in that case smoother in-between frames help convey more speed, in my opinion. You lose some detail and editing options later, since it’s already compressed. But you can also capture for longer times depending on your settings, and can pick just the right frame and smoothly adjust between different speeds.

In the end, using the Go Pro Studio program, I adjusted my shot for a distorted wide view with no cropping, tweaked to make the center less stretched, and centered on the lower edge of the captured frame since they didn’t install carpet on the covering

Oh that would look cool. Not this color though.

—–David

P.S. I love portable batteries from Anker. This is the latest upgrade from the one I have. It comes with a pouch that I also keep cables in for my iPad (and daughter’s iPhone) plus my Android phone. Since it has a micro-USB I can use the same cable to charge the battery from any USB power source.