You are no doubt inspired by some of the great time-lapse videos available on social media, in the news and films today - like natural occurrences including seasonal and weather changes to flowers blooming to natural disasters and the all too famous big-city traffic scenes. So in this three-part blog series, I am going to break down the best way to add this popular time variable into your video composition, regardless if you’re shooting in 360 degrees, virtual reality VR, or even traditional photography. Given a lot of you are travel junkies, I am going to lean into sunsets … Here is a recent example of a video I shot from Brooklyn, New York, as the sun set behind the lower Manhattan skyline. Because I also shot this video in a 360-degree file format, you’ll also see the Brooklyn Bridge come to life as the sun dips below the horizon.
Vuze XR Multi-Lapse 360 Video from Dumbo, New York
There are countless resources available on the internet that explain time-lapse in great detail, so I’m not attempting to recreate those tutorials here; mostly because advancements in technology have made traditional time-lapse processes somewhat obsolete. Instead, I’ll work through a three-part series to introduce you to 360/180 multi-lapse production.
Let’s get started by first addressing the elephant in the room with Multi-Lapse, and that is file size. When using this technique, because you’re capturing the entire time sequence at 30 frames per second, 360-degrees, and high resolution (5.7k with the Vuze XR), the camera will use about 1GB of storage for each one minute of video capture; and that’s a lot of data. So, keep in mind, if you want to record 1 hour of time; that’s about 64GB of data. My longest Multi-Lapse was an 8 hour and 20-minute recording, which filled an entire 512GB card. But don’t worry, I’ll get into how to manage all that data as I explain my workflow.
Here’s what’s in my bag when I shoot a Multi-Lapse Video sequence.
- Vuze XR Camera (Fully Charged)
- Empty 64GB, 128GB and 512GB microSD cards
- Good quality tripod
- USB-C cable with 90-degree connection
- USB Battery Bank
- Mobile phone
- Business cards
In my next blog post, Timewarp with multi-lapse Video Production.
I’ll show you how to shoot a tremendous multi-lapse video with your Vuze XR.
Stay Tuned.