Time-lapse Tutorial – Snow Leopard

I just purchased my first DSLR camera this summer (Nikon D5000) and have been messing around with time-lapse videos. Final Cut Express and iMovie were obvious options to create the video… but I didn’t want to mess with Final Cut for such a simple task (plus that’s not free). Most of the suggestions I came across on the internet said to use Quicktime Player, but I got a bit confused as the new version of Quicktime Player (Quicktime Player X) included with Snow Leopard (stupidly) doesn’t have the ability to create time lapse videos. However, Quicktime Player 7 (the old version that has the ability to do so), is most likely still installed on your computer. Way to make things confusing, Apple. Anywhooo … here’s the process of creating a time lapse video from stills using Quicktime (free) in Snow Leopard:

1. Import your photos to a separate folder someplace on your hard drive. I suggest using Image Capture instead of iPhoto since you can import directly to a folder… whatever works, though.
2. Navigate to and open Quicktime 7 (not Quicktime X) by going to Applications -> Utilities
3. Go to File -> Open Image Sequence
4. Navigate to the folder containing your pictures and select the first picture. Quicktime will automatically grab all the images in the folder.
5. In the selection window that pops up, select the number of frames you want per second (number of images that will comprise a single second) and click OK.
   
6. Once the images load, change the view by going to View -> Fit-To-Screen (Command + 3) to get a better look if your resolution is larger than your computer screen.
7. Save by going to File -> Save.
   –Technically you could stop here or simply export the video using whatever format you please. The pictures I used were quite large, and I had little luck determining which export settings work best. I find it easier to export with QuickTime Player X. Keep reading.
8. Navigate to and open QuickTime Player X (Applications -> QuickTime Player).
9. When opened, click the Export button and select the desired export setting. I found the iTunes setting works pretty well if you want a decent sized movie without taking up too much hard drive space. Once this is finished, you’ll probably want to delete the original video to save some hard drive space.

Cheers!

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