Introduction: Time Lapse Photography With a Webcam

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About: Cool, another box!

In this little 'ible Ill show you how to use your webcam as a timelapse photography device for... well just about anything.

The program Ill be using to control the cam whilst im away, is called Flix, theres a demo out there on the website.
http://www.nimisis.com/flix/

...
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ANYWAYS

On to the how-to

**Sorry for the BW pictures, my IR camera wont go back to being a regular camera**

Step 1: Gather Hither and Bring Your Materials!

What you are going to need is this:
A webcam (1st image) *
A scene (2nd)
Flix 3.3 (3rd)
Time (4th)

  • Make sure you have your webcam drivers installed.

Step 2: Set Up Your Webcam

I just simply hooked mine to my monitor like I always do.
Since its stripped down to the logic board, it likes to hang there.

If your webcam is still in a shell, you could either:
Take it apart
or
Put it somewhere where the cord wont cause it to move

Step 3: Setup Flix

To setup flix I reccomend this setup:
Delay: 10
Dir: C:\

Step 4: Start Flix and Goto Bed

After you get the setup complete, hit the start button, kill your monitor, and goto bed.
Its interesting to watch yourself sleep, so i decided to do a time lapse of it.
Hence this instructable.

Step 5: Movie Time!

After you wake up... its time to make a compilation of the pictures!
Sounds hard right? Making all the thousands of individual pictures into frame in a 25 fps movie...

Flix has this built in, so no need to worry!

Hit the stop button (where the start button used to be)
Now leave all the settings alone, except if you want to change the framerate, or skip every other, etc

Note the video duration box, does it say like 689?
Who wants to watch a 689 second video of someone sleeping?
Thats when you should up the framerate to about 30 and skip every other frame.

When alls done and done, you feel that the time is reasonable, hit the Make Video button.

A box will pop up asking for a codec, use the drop down box and select the DivX Codec.

The waaaaiiiting is the hardest part (guitar solo)

After its done, another box will pop up saying that output.avi has been created!

Open 'er up and watch yourself!

Step 6: Watch the Videos

Feel free to upload any videos that you make in the comments section, I love to see what you guys are making!

Here ill start:

This is my video of me sleeping.

The second (clouds.avi) is just the clouds going by...

Im making another of my neighborhood, from my window.

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