CODEWITHSUNDEEP
imageraspberry-pimovie
Droidum
Droidum

Reputation: 434

Raspberry timelapse movie on the fly

I have a Raspberry on which I want to create a timelapse movie.
All examples I see in the internet FIRST save a bunch of images and THEN converts them into a movie all at once.

I want to create a movie over a long period of time so I can't save thousands of images. What I need is a tool that adds an image to a movie right after the image is captured.

Is there a chance to do that?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 72

Answers (2)

George Chennell
George Chennell

Reputation: 21

An answer but it isn't finished! I need your help making this perfect! Running in python2

import os, cv2
from picamera import PiCamera
from picamera.array import PiRGBArray
from datetime import datetime
from time import sleep

now = datetime.now()
x = now.strftime("%Y")+"-"+now.strftime("%m")+"-"+now.strftime("%d")+"-"+now.strftime("%H")+"-"+now.strftime("%M")  #string of dateandtimestart

def main():
  imagenum = 100 #how many images
  period = 1 #seconds between images
  os.chdir ("/home/pi/t_lapse")
  os.mkdir(x)
  os.chdir(x)
  filename = x + ".avi"

  camera = PiCamera()
  camera.resolution=(1920,1088)
  camera.vflip = True
  camera.hflip = True
  camera.color_effects = (128,128) #makes a black and white image for IR camera
  sleep(0.1)
  out = cv2.VideoWriter(filename, cv2.cv.CV_FOURCC(*'XVID'), 30, (1920,1088))
  for c in range(imagenum):
      with PiRGBArray(camera, size=(1920,1088)) as output:
          camera.capture(output, 'bgr')
          imagec = output.array
          out.write(imagec)
          output.truncate(0) #trying to get more than 300mb files..
          pass
      sleep(period-0.5)
  camera.close()
  out.release()

if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()

I've got this configured with with a few buttons and an OLED to select time spacing and frame numbers displayed on a OLED (code not shown above for simplicity but it is also here: https://github.com/gchennell/RPi-PiLapse )

This doesn't make videos larger than 366Mb which is some sort of limit I've reached and I don't know why - if anyone has a good suggestion I would appreciate it

Upvotes: 1

David T. Macknet
David T. Macknet

Reputation: 3172

There's a flaw in your logic, I think - by adding each image to the movie, you would necessarily be adding a full-frame, rather than only a diff frame. This will result in higher quality, sure - but it will also not save you anything in terms of space as compared to saving the entire image. The space savings you see in adding things to movies is all about that diff, rather than storing a full frame.

Doing a partial diff with check-frames at increments might work, but I'm not sure what format you're targeting, nor what codexes would be needed in order to arbitrarily tack on either a diff frame or a full frame, depending on some external condition - encoding usually takes place as a series of operations rather than singly.

Upvotes: 1

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