Introduction

Create stunning videos of your project with our timelapse feature. Our long-term timelapse allows you to capture the project at every stage no matter how long it is. No matter if your project is just a few weeks long or will take years to complete, with our timelapse you will be able to review the progress at any moment, download the whole movie at any time during or after the project is complete, monitor your project and share it with anyone.

Note: At this time timelapses can be enabled only by our team. In the future, we will add the ability to set up them in the admin portal.

Timelapse Options

If the requirement is to record a timelapse in 4k, then the camera must support 4k recording. Additionally, to record the timelapse in this quality, the main streaming channel of the camera must be configured to this resolution. 

Local Security provides 3 possible solutions:

• Keep one copy of the camera and configure it to stream at 4k.

This will increase cloud costs and data consumption on-site, as the 4k stream will be transmitted continuously. In this scenario, both continuous recording and timelapse recording will be of high quality.
 

• Add a second copy of the camera. 

The original copy of the camera can be reconfigured to use the substream, which will be at a lower resolution. The second copy of the camera can be configured to stream at 4k and then disabled. This approach keeps overall data consumption on-site low while providing a channel for our servers to access the highest image quality the camera can produce and allows you to use all other features of our platform.
 

• Keep one copy of the camera, reconfigure it to 4k, and then disable it. 

This will stop continuous archive recording and live streaming, saving on data consumption while allowing our platform to record the timelapse at the highest possible resolution. In this scenario, all other features of the platform won't work since there is no continuous stream available.

To achieve the best results please follow these guidelines:

1. Use a good quality camera. The camera should last for the whole duration of the project. If the camera has to be replaced in the middle of the project this will create a "quality jump" in the final video and you might lose a few days/weeks of footage during the time when the new camera is being installed and is being adjusted to match the position and quality of the original camera.
2. To record a timelapse in 4K quality, the camera must support 4K recording.
3. Decide on the good position of the camera that will allow it to see the project during all stages of its lifetime. Repositioning the camera during the project will cause a scene change in the final video.
4. Make sure that no bright light sources (sun or artificial lighting) are shining or will be shining directly into the camera during operational hours. This might temporarily "blind" the camera creating a white image.
5. Choose the desired resolution and image quality. Make sure that your internet service provider will be able to provide you with enough bandwidth.
6. Choose the desired timelapse parameters.
7. Input a real camera address in the Admin portal. This is needed to calculate the sunrise and sunset times for the correct image recording schedule.

The timelapse parameter that you need to specify:

1. Time of the day to record images and Days of the week to record determine the schedule on which the timelapse will be created. We can record images on the following schedules:

• 24x7
• 24 hours per day Monday through Friday only
• Sunrise to sunset 7 days a week
• Sunrise to sunset Monday through Friday

2. Resolution at which the images will be captured. It is possible to use two streams from the same camera. The first stream is set to lower quality and thus uses less bandwidth and is used for regular monitoring. The second stream is set to a higher resolution and quality and is used for the Timelapse. The second stream is active only at the moments when the image for Timelapse is stored, the rest of the time this stream is not active thus it does not create extra load on the network.

3. Duration of video recorded per day, in other words, how many seconds we should compress each day to?

IMPORTANT: Possible choices are 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 seconds per day. To estimate how many seconds will be optimal for your project use the following formula and then round it to the nearest allowable number (2, 4, 6, 8, or 10 seconds):

Where D is the duration in seconds per day to be recorded; L is the desired length of the final movie in minutes; P is the total number of days during which video will be recorded.

For example:

You have a project that will last 300 days and you want your final timelapse to be 10 minutes long then according to the above formula L = 10 and P = 300, substituting these numbers in the formula we will get:

The final video is played at 24 frames per second. So if the Duration per day is 2 seconds the final video will have 48 (2 seconds * 24 frames/second) frames (images) for every day of the project. These 48 frames will be taken in equal intervals during the hours specified in the parameters. So if 24 hours per day recording is requested then 1 image will be recorded every 30 minutes.

Based on the above example, the timelapse parameters that you will need to provide to us will look like this: