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Wanted to pick the brains of experienced timelapsers on the forum. I'll be taking a GoPro and want to set it up for timelapse when our ship spends 3 hours in view of Hubbard Glacier. Anyone wish to share their interval times that worked for them? I'm thinking two seconds between images about equates to ~4300 frames and several gigs at 1440 rez. Any input would be appreciated. I posted this last December on the Alaska forum but nada.

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Two seconds might work out just fine.  I have done some time lapse in Glacier Bay and the Panama Canal.  At that speed, and playing back at 30fps I think you would end up with two minutes and twenty seconds of video.  I have done some at .5  and that has worked for me, although the files are a bit bigger.  On the ship I have used a tripod on the balcony and a GoPro clamp on the railing.  Both worked fine.  The larger issue may be battery capacity.  On my Hero 4 I had an external battery that attached to the case and maintained a watertight seal.  The newer 6 or 7 is more of a challenge to keep dry.  If there is no rain then you can use any USB power source.  Waterproof power extenders are available, B&H has one for $60.  Play with it before you get to Hubbard Glacier and see what works for you.

 

Tom

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Thanks Re-tired. I had experimented in the backyard with cloud shots @5secs and I thought that might be too long of an interval for the glacier vid. I've got an Anker Powercore 13000 which weighs 9oz and have Velcro set up to attach the power core to my GripGear slider motor to keep it under the weight limit of 750grams. I found a short USB-C 90 degree cord to connect the power core to both the GoPro7 and the GripGear motor. As it turns out with the angle connector, I can use waterproof medical tape to protect the GoPro USB-C from the elements unless it is a raging storm blowing horizontal rain. I also found a Gorilla Pod to attach the GP to the rail. I even found pix of the rail of our cabin here on CC to make sure it will work. I'm going to also carry a Ram mount suction cup in case I have to mount it to the glass. I'm still running practice sessions around the neighborhood and think I have the operation of the camera down fairly well. When I get back the editing learning curve begins. I recently got Adobe Premiere and Cyberlink PowerDirector. I tried using the GoPro Studio and Quik but they gave me fits when opening even after installing QuickTime. I'm really green on this video thing but been taking photos since 1966 in high school. Thanks again.

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Just a thought. If you are planning on doing this from your balcony, keep in mind that it is customary for the captain to spin the ship to present the glacier to balconies on both sides.

 

 

Dave

Edited by pierces
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I'll assume that your exposures are all going to be pretty quick (plenty of light) so your exposures don't push past 2 seconds. Assuming that you're shooting for 24 frames per second, you'll have several minutes worth of imagery to isolate the actual video of interest.

 

Here's a VERY RAW timelapse I did (some of which was shot from my balcony). I just uploaded it for the sake of sharing what balcony time lapses might look like. 

 

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Thanks for the info. I did know about ship spinning to take everyone for a view. My plan was to GorillaPod the GP to the rail and set it for timelapse with 2 sec. intervals unless you pros know better. I'll have an external PowerCore 21000 feeding the GP with the rig tethered for safety. The only way I have to protect the connections is by covering with tape the 90 degree USB-C input. Kind of a kluge but unless a terrific storm arrives, I should be good. Have not decided what res, fps, or fov will work best. I've got time to experiment at home for the 3 hour TL vid. I plan on finding a spot on deck to shoot stills and vid with a Nikon 7500, so the GP will be on its own.

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2 hours ago, masterdrago said:

I'll have an external PowerCore 21000 feeding the GP with the rig tethered for safety.

 

In addition to the power issue, you'll want to verify you have your storage configured properly.  I learned that the hard way when the formatting on my SD card resulted in everything being capped at 4GB!

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8 hours ago, AL3XCruise said:

 

In addition to the power issue, you'll want to verify you have your storage configured properly.  I learned that the hard way when the formatting on my SD card resulted in everything being capped at 4GB!

Again, I have extremely little real life experience shooting video. I had learned that somewhere. The 7 Black will "chapter" a large video shoot into 4gig segments so forces the user to use an editor to put it back together. Clearly that would only occur when taking long high res, high frame rate, superwide vids and possibly using Protune. Although the complete video can be viewed on the GoPro, there will be about a 200ms loss of audio between each chapter in playback, while no video frames will be lost.

Also, it doesn't matter which card or format you use since the GoPro will format anything larger than 32gig using exFAT. GoPro claims that the 4gig limit is for other device compatibility and to safeguard loss of an entire video. Seems weird to me but I'm nowhere near a computer genius. When I read that, I was thinking if I shot 2 hours of 2.7K 120FPS Wide video in HVEC (which would fill a 64gig SD card), and lost a 4gig segment, it might ruin the entire video anyway. Just from the standpoint of loss of continuity.

Another thing to remember is that the 7 Black can write at over 66MB/s, so it would be a good idea to use high quality SD cards. I'm only using 64gig SanDisc Extreme Pro that have write speeds of 90MB/s.

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Thanks for starting this Masterdrago. I got a Hero 6 last year to use up some OBC last year and now I am hoping to start playing with it soon, especially since a good friend has asked me to do a time lapse of one of his projects going up....That is a real project for someone who spent his whole life making stills.....

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On 4/18/2019 at 1:20 AM, masterdrago said:

Wanted to pick the brains of experienced timelapsers on the forum. I'll be taking a GoPro and want to set it up for timelapse when our ship spends 3 hours in view of Hubbard Glacier. Anyone wish to share their interval times that worked for them? I'm thinking two seconds between images about equates to ~4300 frames and several gigs at 1440 rez. Any input would be appreciated. I posted this last December on the Alaska forum but nada.

 

I looked at one of my time lapse movies from sailing up the Mississippi river. It was made with a GoPro 5 black.

I used 2 seconds per frame at 4K and the battery lasted for about 2,5 hours which gave 2,5 minute of time lapse movie. The total size of the movie was 1,2 Gb.

 

My recommendation is to use 4K as you can pick some not too bad stills from the movie. 2 seconds was actually too long for going up the Mississippi river. Closer to New Orleans I changed to 1 (or maybe even 0,5 - don’t remember exactly) seconds per frame.

I guess the ship speed will be much lower cruising the Hubbard Glacier, but remember that you can always remove every second frame (or so) while editing your video in a video editor but never add frames (that are not recorded) to your movie.

Try to put the line where the water meets land (or the horizon) as close to the center of the frame as possible as it will get curved as soon as it’s off center.

 

I will upload my Mississippi time lapse movies to Youtube once I get a new computer. My old just crashed but a new one will arrive within a week or two.

 

/Erik

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On 4/17/2019 at 8:20 PM, masterdrago said:

Wanted to pick the brains of experienced timelapsers on the forum. I'll be taking a GoPro and want to set it up for timelapse when our ship spends 3 hours in view of Hubbard Glacier. Anyone wish to share their interval times that worked for them? I'm thinking two seconds between images about equates to ~4300 frames and several gigs at 1440 rez. Any input would be appreciated. I posted this last December on the Alaska forum but nada.

 

Honestly I wouldn't time lapse an event like that and would just shoot at normal res and then speed it up in Post. This makes it look more smooth and really gives you timeline options to play with, vice being stuck with a hard 2 second interval.

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On 4/20/2019 at 10:39 AM, masterdrago said:

Again, I have extremely little real life experience shooting video. I had learned that somewhere. The 7 Black will "chapter" a large video shoot into 4gig segments so forces the user to use an editor to put it back together. Clearly that would only occur when taking long high res, high frame rate, superwide vids and possibly using Protune. Although the complete video can be viewed on the GoPro, there will be about a 200ms loss of audio between each chapter in playback, while no video frames will be lost.

Also, it doesn't matter which card or format you use since the GoPro will format anything larger than 32gig using exFAT. GoPro claims that the 4gig limit is for other device compatibility and to safeguard loss of an entire video. Seems weird to me but I'm nowhere near a computer genius. When I read that, I was thinking if I shot 2 hours of 2.7K 120FPS Wide video in HVEC (which would fill a 64gig SD card), and lost a 4gig segment, it might ruin the entire video anyway. Just from the standpoint of loss of continuity.

Another thing to remember is that the 7 Black can write at over 66MB/s, so it would be a good idea to use high quality SD cards. I'm only using 64gig SanDisc Extreme Pro that have write speeds of 90MB/s.


If I can, I have a ton of experience with GoPro cameras so I can be a resource here. I'm also one of the senior members of r/GoPro on Reddit.

 

Every GoPro model will chapter your footage, not just the Hero7 and each chapter will be just over 11 minutes long. You will need an editing program to splice all the chapters together again when you edit your footage, but it's not difficult. The footage you play back on your camera is not the full resolution and instead is the low-res version also recorded by the camera. This low-res footage will have a .lrv file extension and when you transfer all your footage to your computer for editing, these .lrv files can be deleted (I believe they're 640x480 res so not worth keeping). There should be no loss of audio or frames when the footage is chaptered and if you're experiencing this, there is an issue with either the camera or the memory card you're using.

Speaking of memory cards, never use a memory card in a GoPro camera that isn't on this list: https://gopro.com/help/articles/Block/microSD-Card-Considerations. Even cards within the same brand and model but with different sizes are known to not operate well within the camera. This is why you'll see the Samsung Evo Select 128 and 256 GB cards, but not the 64 GB model.

"When I read that, I was thinking if I shot 2 hours of 2.7K 120FPS Wide video in HVEC (which would fill a 64gig SD card), and lost a 4gig segment, it might ruin the entire video anyway. Just from the standpoint of loss of continuity."

If you shoot for a solid 2 hours, you're actually shooting outside the intended use case for a GoPro, which is actually intended to be used for short bursts of shooting (from 1-10 minutes). Think of shooting with a GoPro camera like a Hollywood director; they don't shoot an entire 2 hour movie all at once and instead, they cut it up into scenes. You should do the same thing when shooting with your GoPro and set the scene, shoot the scene and then move on. I've gone on a 30 day work trip to Hawaii and only filled a 128 GB card which I turned into a 9 minute video.

The bitrate for the 7 Black varies quite a bit, depending on which resolution you shoot. I've made a bitrate chart for the 7 Black which I host on Dropbox, if you'd like to take a look: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3pvr8zj0gemgrub/Video Modes %26 Bitrates.xlsx?dl=0

If you have any other GoPro related questions, don't be afraid to hit me up or you can take a look at the "99% of all GoPro questions are answered in this Wiki" post over on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/gopro/wiki/99percentofproblems

Edited by Sean_B
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Thanks for the pointers, sean_b. I've still got some time to do a lot more experimentation at home b4 trip. I have been informed about chaptering but have not had ANY editing experience. YET. I've read several accounts that there is a 1/5th second faint tick or pop between chapters when edited together due to audio drop. Don't remember where I ran across that. The SD cards I've bought are on the recommended list w/ 90MB/s write speed. I've looked at a number of time lapse GoPro vids but had not read the frame rates anywhere. A few suggestions of every 2 sec was what advice I've been seeing. I still have some more math to work out but the GP will be left on its own during the Hubbard Glacier filming. Thanks again for the info on reddit. A lot to learn for this guy who has been only a still junkie for 53 years 🙂

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don't know if you'll get three hours facing the glacier. I'd suspect it's more like 20-30 minutes with one side facing, and then 15-25 minutes with the other side.

 

When I've done time lapses with my DSLR, I've been focused on the long view, so I was at one shot per minute but was trying to capture the whole trip (I missed a memory card change on a four-night cruise so there's a three-hour hole, but otherwise end-to-end). For the glacier stuff, I'd push towards 1/sec if not 2/sec so you can get more of the transition of a calving.

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  • 1 month later...

Looks like we and the Twangster were near each other a few times. Our Radiance and his Ovation shared docks a couple of times. It was strange seeing that monster parked right next to our little baby ship :=]  Anyway, what I ended up doing was what sean_b suggested and just set up the rig to shoot 60fps 16:9 1080 Linear. I let it run between 2:30 and 5:30 ADT, so have 3 hours of Hubbard Glacier video to edit through. As what I expected, the files are cut into 4Gig chunks. 12 of them. There does seem to be a hiccup at 4:41pm where only a 6 minute vid was recorded. The other issue is that only the first vid (time stamp 2:38) plays all the way through. All of the other vids when opened in PotPlayer or Power Director 17 show one screen of an iceberg while the vid is playing the audio. I know that all the vids have to be pieced together  but have not tried that yet.

video files at hubbard glacier.jpg

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Even after the 12 files are produced, rendered, etc, there is still an issue. During playback of the 3h20m vid, at 26m25s, the video freezes on one frame but continues to play in the timeline with audio running correctly. Sadly, I'm a complete novice at this.

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