A few recommendations for time-lapse videos:
- Use high-definition: Your photo camera can do it, the video will be great in HD.
- Include some attractive central subject: Don’t just shoot clouds and skys.
- Make sure that there is a lot of activity: It would make no sense to speed up a boring single move from right to left (or similar).
- Innovate: Let’s be original, a rotting piece of food has been shot hundreds of times.
After you’ve shot a few hundreds or a few thousand images (you’d better have a big memory card, right?), you should make the video. Here is a list of software programs that you could use:
- GBTimeLapse is able to control Canon cameras, and assemble pictures ($79, or trial version)
- QuickTime Pro ($29.99). Just start with menu command:
File>Open Image Sequence… - Free MPlayer (available for Linux and Windows) will do it all with a couple of command line instructions (see the box at the right).
- Flix ($10.00 for new users)
- Older versions of Jasc Paint Shop Pro used to include a program called Animation Shop (unfortunately, Corel removed it from recent versions).
- For the Mac (I did not try it), the most famous solution seems to be iStopMotion (from $49).
Instructions for using MPlayer can be found at the end of the “How to Create Time-Lapse Movies with a Digital Photo Camera” article.