How I use this

We dedicated an Asus Eee PC to make time-lapse videos using an external HD webcam. The computer is running the GNU/Linux distribution CrunchBang (based on Debian, just like Ubuntu).

Installing some software

• VLC (to capture stills from the webcam)
• mencoder (to make the stills into videos)
• screen (optional, handy to keep track of the constantly running capturing process)
• cheese (optional, good for testing webcam and tweaking its position and angle)

As CrunchBang comes with APT I can simply

1. issue this in a terminal sudo apt-get install vlc mencoder screen cheese
2. Now you might want to run cheese and try out your webcam, check it's resolution and what not.

Setting up the scripts

1. Then we'll get the scripts git clone git@github.com:gorbiz/time-lapse.git
2. cd time-lapse
3. You might want to edit the capturing script nano start_capture
4. When all looks good start capturing screen -S capturing ./start_capture. XXX sometimes it breaks; try again :P. (Leave the screen by Ctrl + a, let go and hit d)

Photos should now stack up in the snaps/ folder. You can assemble all of them into a film clip using render_full or to include only today's render_today. However you'll probably want to modify these scripts to your liking.

I like to automate all of that so I enter crontab -e and put something like this in there:

# Make a time-lapse video for today
*/15 * * * * cd ~/time-lapse && ./render_today && cp ~/time-lapse/videos/today.avi ~/Dropbox/plant-lapse/

# Make a time-lapse video from all photos (ever taken)
0 0 * * * cd ~/time-lapse && ./render_full && cp ~/time-lapse/videos/full.avi ~/Dropbox/plant-lapse/

# Put the latest snapshot in Dropbox
* * * * * ls -t ~/time-lapse/snaps/*.png | head --lines=1 | xargs -i cp {} ~/Dropbox/plant-lapse/recent.png

Rejoice!

The earth has yielded its produce; God, our God, blesses us. (Psalms 67:6)