Time-lapse of the Week #9

Here is another great time-lapse from neilbromhall of some germinating beans up close and personal and even underground.

And from mtainfo we have some interesting footage of the NYC marathon.

Since I didn't do a TLOTW last week I am posting a bonus video that I found today that is not even a time-lapse and wasn't posted during this week. It is a stop motion video with post it notes from bunliu and it is very cool.

Enjoy and have a great week!

A Rotoscoped Animation of Rotary Nystagmus Due to BPPV

A few years ago when I made my claymation version of the Dix-Hallpike and Epley Maneuvers for BPPV, I also made a lame attempt to show an example of rotary nystagmus with a claymation eye but that didn't turn out so well and I forgot about it. I have now returned to the subject but with a new twist. I used some new animation software to create an animation of rotary nystagmus. I also threw in the claymation portion of the Dix-Hallpike video with a few modifications to parallel the test findings. It turned out even better than I expected it to. I used Toon Boom Studio 5 to rotoscopically animate a normal close-up video that I made of a face with one eye in the frame. Then I manipulated the eye layer of the drawing to simulate the rotational movements of the eye associated with BPPV. Here is the final product:

Milky Way Time-lapse

I have tried to do some time-lapses of the night sky. Some have been okay, but not really worth showing off. This one from William Castleman is probably the best that I have seen.

You should probably go to his website or his YouTube page and check out the larger HD versions.

Ten Days of Tulips - Time-lapse

Time-lapse Tulips Growing, 640x480, .mov, 9.9 mb 36 sec

I do believe that this is my best time-lapse yet. I just finished the filming a few days after easter. The pictures were taken at a rate of every fifteen minutes when the overhead grow light was on, or every 20 minutes when it was off. It was an attempt to simulate day and night. Finally I just left it on because it didn't seem to make much difference. I was really impressed with how much the plants moved and how the blooms would open in unison, even when there were no apparent changes in this otherwise completely dark room. I used my Canon PowerShot S3 IS and Granite Bay Time-lapse software for the shooting. I made the movie with QuickTime Pro playing the pictures back at 30 fps. I created and added the hip hop music using Sony Acid Music Studio. The music seemed appropriate given the movement of the tulips. You can see this tulip time-lapse video at my YouTube player page if you can't view quicktime videos.

You can also see my other time-lapse videos at my time-lapse home page.

Time-lapse March Clouds Over Reservoir

Time-lapse Clouds, 640x480, .mov, 8.5 mb 38 sec

I am sure that I will eventually get tired of doing time-lapses and move on to something else, but I just can't quit thinking of all the different things I could film. The main thing I want to do with clouds is get some huge cumulonimbus clouds boiling up from a distance, but that will probably have to wait until summer. So in the meantime I am just trying lots of different things for practice, like this one. It was made on a very windy day beside a reservoir at sunset. It took approximately 1 and a half hours. I started at 1 picture per 5 seconds then decreased the frequency to every 4 seconds. I used my Canon PowerShot S3 IS and Granite Bay Time-lapse software for the shooting. I made the movie with QuickTime Pro playing the pics at 30 fps. I made the music with Sony Acid Music Studio. The YouTube version of this cloud time-lapse video is available if you can't play quicktime vids.

This and other time-lapse videos and stop motion videos can be seen at my time-lapse home page.

Fruit Lapse

Time-lapse Decaying Fruit, 640x480, .mov, 6.7 mb 39 sec

This is a time-lapse video of some fruit - banana, apple chunks, kiwi, lemon, grapes- deteriorating over exactly 3 weeks. The pictures were taken several times per hour at first then the rate was slowed down to once per hour toward the end. It is played back at 30 fps initially the replayed at a much faster rate. I used a Canon PowerShot S3 IS and Granite Bay time-lapse software for the video and made the music using Sony Acid Music Studio. I think it turned out fairly well. The biggest problem with this one was that I got tired of the continuous loud whirring of the laptop used to control the camera so I shut it down and just used the intervalometer on the camera to take a picture every hour. In doing so, I unavoidably moved the camera a little which readjusted the focus and caused a few wobbles in the video. This change can be seen toward the end when the banana goes slightly out of focus. The YouTube version of this time-lapse decomposing fruit video is available if you can't play quicktime vids.

This and other time-lapse videos and stop motion videos can be seen at my time-lapse home page.

UPDATE 7/20/10: Here is my best video of fruit and vegetables decomposing

Time-lapse Sunset Over Reservoir

Time-lapse sunset, 640x480, .mov, 9.8 mb 19 sec

This time-lapse video was made a couple of weeks ago with my new setup including the Canon PowerShot S3 IS and the Granite Bay Time-lapse software. I think it turned out fairly well for my first try. I made the accompanying music with my Sony Acid Music Studio software. It is kind of eerie, which was not really intentional, it just turned out that way. I had a couple of problems with the video. One was that I took the pictures every 5 seconds, which was too frequent for the mininmal action involved so I had to play it back at 60 fps rather than 30 fps. Also, my laptop ran out of power before the sun was completely down so it was cut short. I did like the contrails left behind as the jets flew over and I enjoy the appearance of the water as the wind died down and the water became perfectly still. The above video is a rather large file for the short time but is of fairly good quality. The YouTube version of this time-lapse sunset video is not quite as good but is a quicker download.

This and other time-lapse videos and stop motion videos can be seen at my time-lapse home page.

Time-lapse Colored Water in Melting Ice and a Tulip

640x480, mov, 4.4 mb 33 sec

For this time-lapse video, I started by freezing water in an ice cube tray. Before the cube was completely solid, I used a syringe to inject some colored water in the center and let it freeze a little longer. Then I placed the cube in the glass of water with the tulip. I used my Canon PowerShot S3 IS and Granite Bay time-lapse software to make the movie. Initially the pics were taken about every 4-6 seconds but I stretched it out to every few minutes once I focused on the flower. I used the Sony Acid Music Studio to make the accompanying music.

Here are the rest of my time-lapse and stop motion videos or all these plus others can be seen at my YouTube player page.

Time-lapse Ice Melting in a Wine Glass

click to view video

This Time-laspe video was taken over several hours with my Canon PowerShot S3 IS along with my recently purchased GBTimelapse softwae, Both of which have been very satisfying so far. I took a picture about every 5 seconds during the shooting. The main faults are that I accidentally got my foot hung in a cord and knocked the camera off the table, which is noticealbe at about 13 seconds when you see the glass shift a little. I also was not able to figure out how to turn on the macro funtion with the GBTimelapse software until near the end of the shooting. It is not apparent on the YouTube version due to the degree of compression but you can see it at around the 2/3 mark on the quicktime version. I used my Sony Acid Music Studio software to create the music.

Here is the YouTube version of Ice Melting in a Wine Glass. Here are the rest of my time-lapse and stop motion videos.

Time-lapse Crystals Growing

Click to view Video, 6.9 mb, 33 sec, Quicktime

This is one of my first videos made with my recently purchased Canon PowerShot S3 IS. The main reason I chose this camera over the newer Canon PowerShot S5 IS is that I had read that the intervalometer feature was not in the later model and of course it was a little cheaper. I used the intervalometer to take a picture every 4 minutes during the 2 days that I allowed the crystals to grow. I used the "Space Age Crystal Growing Kit" as directed except that I didn't place any rocks in the solution to seed the crystals. The video turned out about okay, the crystals grew, but the visual effect is kind of bland. The quicktime version on my site is much sharper than the YouTube version. I made the music using my Sony Acid Music Studio software.

You can see my other time-lapse and stop motion videos here.

Time-lapse Sunset from the Hancock Tower

click the pic to view 3.5mb, 7 sec.

This is a brief time-lapse video I made in Chicago while on a visit there back in October. We were up in the bar of the Hancock tower and obviously had an excellent table. I used my good ol' Sony Cybershot, taking each picture about every 15 seconds while resting the camera on the back of the booth I was sitting in. It is a little short because we didn't think to start taking the pics until the sun was almost all the way down.

Here's the video at YouTube.

Other time-lapse and stop motion videos can be seen here.

New Bulletin Board and the First Forum, Time-lapse Videos

Not too long ago I purchased the domain webiocosm.net through a different provider with hopes of finding a system of running not just my blog, but also the entire website without an expensive or obsolete program like Front Page. I am still mainly using the domain webiocosm.com at this time, but I am looking to employ or at least test some of the features readily available on this new service. As a result I have started the Webiocosm Bulletin board to promote discussion about topics that I and other readers find important. Here is the first Forum, which is about Time-lapse videos.

Update 08/16/07: Forget the Bulletin Board, it is too much trouble keeping the porn and medication peddlers off of there.

Purple Pill Stop Motion Video

This is a brief video I made using my good old Sony Cybershot. I wanted to make a video running at 30 frames per second and to use my Sony Acid Music Studio software for a video. This was the first time I used the music software to make a tune and synchronize it with a video; it was surprisingly easy to do. I used quicktime pro to make the initial video from all the stills. Then I converted the video to AVI format for use with Windows Movie Maker, with which I added the titles. Next, I opened the video with the acid music studio software and created the music from about 7 or 8 sample loops, then I saved the audio file and added it to the video using windows movie maker.

The star of the video was a promotional purple pill clock given to me by a Nexium representative. It had been lying around the house and my kid had claimed it as his own, but he let me borrow it for the production. Nexium is a medication in a class of medications known as proton pump inhibitors which are very effective for symptoms of GERD and problems related to gastric acid secretion.

Click the above picture or here to see the small version (1.6 mb, .wmv, 32 sec), large version (3.6 mb, .wmv, 32 sec), or you can see it on YouTube.

This video and my other stop motion, claymaion and time-lapse videos can be seen here.

Oil and Colored Water Time-lapse

 

play video, quicktime, 2.5 mb, 70 sec

I made this stop motion video by taking a picture every time a drop was added, enlarged, or popped and more frequently during times of rapid change. The water used initially was pure. Then, I began adding saline with or without the coloring to see how it would diffuse. Later I used pure water again to see how the diffusion differed. The bubble sounds were dubbed in later. I also uploaded the video to YouTube but the soundtrack didn't keep time with the bubbles following the conversion so it is not as good as the QuickTime version.

A larger version of this video and other Time-lapse and Stop Motion videos can be seen here.

A Dizzy Diagnosis: Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo

click to view video 

BPPV is a disorder of the inner ear which is a cause of vertigo in approximately 20% of patients who present to their doctor with this complaint. This occurs when otoconia are dislodged from their usual position within the utricle and they migrate over time into one of the semicircular canals (the posterior canal is most commonly affected due to its anatomical position). This Diagnosis can be made using the Dix-Hallpike Test and is frequently treated by use of the Epley Maneuvers.

In my practice, I make this diagnosis more often than many of my peers, mostly I think because I look for it. To me, it is about the only bright spot when dealing with the chief complaint of "dizziness". This is because treatment is so effective and no medicines are required. Patients have called back in a day or two just to tell me that it worked because they are so surprised. Honestly, when I first started doing it, I was surprised as well. It seems like most of the family practitioners that I talk to have heard of this simple procedure, but most of them never try it because for some reason it seems too magical or tricky. For that reason I have created this claymation video to serve as a visual aid for those who are interested. Keep in mind that this is not my specialty, this is not intended to replace a visit to your doctor if you experience vertigo, and you shouldn't try this if you don't have the training to know when you shouldn't do it. This is just a fun little video to give you very basic idea of how it is done. I will gladly accept any criticism of the technique, but don't expect me to change the video because the patient has been thrown out. Enjoy.

Claymation Eye Movement

7 sec., 1.5 Mb, QuickTime

This video was made during the same session as the Dix-Hallpike and Epley Maneuver video was made. I was going to try to demonstrate Rotary (torsional) nystagmus which becomes apparent with a positive Dix-Hallpike test. However the clay was too soft and the toothpicks in the back of the eye kept moving around instead of the eye moving properly, so I just did the best I could at making the eye look around and look as real as possible.

Claymation Water Drop

4 Sec., Quicktime, 780 kb

Back in July when I made my first claymation video, I thought I was going to make a ton of them, but since there aren't enough hours in a day, I haven't made another one until yesterday. I tried to produce a realistic slow motion video of a water drop falling into a bowl of water using one of my sons bowls and his blue play-doh. I only took 66 pictures and created a movie sequence using Quicktime pro. The video is not too realistic looking but it turned out better than expected. I spent about 2 hours and 15 minutes on the entire project. The above movie is small but good quality for a quick download. You can go to my time-lapse video download page to view the large version and a small WMV/AVI version.

My First Claymation Video

I can see that this is probably going to get out of hand. As I mentioned in my last post, I have always been a big fan of time-lapse photography. I will also mention that I have always been a big fan of animation and claymation which are variations of the same basic concept. I dreamed of being able to do this stuff when I was a kid. In fact I spent a great deal of time making animated flip books with cartoons about my friends. Now that I am a big kid with some new technology, I am about to go crazy with it. This morning I got up and spent about an hour and a half producing this short claymation video just to see how it would turn out. The original was much larger with a higher quality picture, but I greatly reduced it, just so it could be quickly downloaded. As you will see if you watch it, picture quality is not that important at this point. A couple of things I could do to improve the video would be to get better, more constant lighting and have the camera more stable. This video is 28 seconds long, and available in Quicktime (2.2Mb) or AVI (2.8 Mb) format.

First Claymation Video