I am starting to explore various tools and applications for time-lapse movies. These two videos are from my last flight from Paris to Chicago. I used the standard iOS time-lapse feature on the iPhone to make these videos which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. For longer time-lapse movies, the stock Apple solution is not very flexible in that Apple enforces a time limit of around 37 seconds for the video. This time limit is in force regardless of how long the video happens to be. Its a clever solution for those that don’t want to fuss with details that is accomplished by recording up to a set time (~37 seconds), then dynamically throwing out evenly spaced, intermediate frames that has the effect of progressively compressing the time.
For instance, the first clip compresses time around 15x, whereas the 2nd clip covering a 8hr flight or so makes for somewhere around a 500x increase in time compression. This makes for a very smooth looking first clip and a somewhat chaotic appearing 2nd clip. Though I doubt many folks are going to be making hours long time-lapse movies with their iPhone, it would be nice to have some additional flexibility with frame rates.
I’ll look at additional options in the near future and see if there are better, more flexible solutions to longer time-lapse movies with the iPhone.
When I watched the CDG to ORD movie on YouTube before reading this blog post, I thought it would be nice if the starting and landing were not as fast as the part in between. After reading this, it makes sense. I’ve never done time-lapses, so have no suggestions :)
I have some additional time-lapse movies coming up where I did separate captures for ground vs. in flight.