Tag Archives: timelapse

avconv replaces ffmpeg for Video/Audio Conversion

Linux, Raspberry Pi, Time Lapse Photography, , , , , , , ,

Recently I wanted to convert an AVI file to an m4v on Linux Mint 17.3. I tried to use ffmpeg, it’s not there. I can’t isntall it…hmmm. So I did some digging, it has been replaced by avconv. To get avconv….

sudo apt-get install libav-tools

To use

Online, I read that there are some syntax differences between ffmpeg and avconv, so I was reluctant to just symlink pointing ffmpeg to avconv and have scripts break.

But I did a quick test taking a good guess…

avconv -i timelapse-wx-station-4-08-to-7-12-2016.avi timelapse-wx-station-4-08-to-7-12-2016.m4v

…and, it worked. Got me a much smaller file than the AVI and worked it’s magic in a short minute or two.

Video of Weather Station from April 8,2016 to July 12,2016

This was what I was testing out with the conversion. Video taken by using fswebcam to gather a still shot of my weather station once per hour on the Raspberry Pi. Once per day the shots are rolled up into an AVI video and stored in a tmp folder which is mounted in RAM. Well the RAM folder does fill up after a while and I copied the file off and saved it on my desktop. This video shows the weather changing from spring to summer.

Resources

http://askubuntu.com/questions/432542/is-ffmpeg-missing-from-the-official-repositories-in-14-04

 

Hibiscus Flower

Hibiscus Blooming Timelapse Video

Time Lapse Photography, , ,

In late October I used a laptop running Linux and fswebcam ran via a looping script to capture pictures of a Hibiscus plant that was blooming. I took one frame every 10 minutes and then used mencoder to produce an AVI video at 12fps. The webcam takes pictures at 640×320 which is a good size for online videos.

The Hibiscus is quite striking as it blooms. Not only does the flower spiral out it opens and spiral back on it self as it closes up again. But the whole thing is constantly vibrating and moving during the blooming process. This movement is something that would not have been noticed without using time lapse photography. It took four takes to get a decent video. On takes 1 to 3, I wound up re-positioning the camera away from the flower as it expanded in size when it opened.

hibiscus-flower-blooming-avi

 

Kombucha with SCOBY

Kombucha SCOBY Timelapse Video

Fermentation, Raspberry Pi, Time Lapse Photography, , , , , ,

I ran a webcam pointed at a fermentation of Kombucha capturing frames using fswebcam running on a Raspberry Pi server. It ran for a few weeks.

You can see the Kombucha SCOBY’s forming in the video. The setup is behind the PC monitor with a desk lamp and camera pointing towards the back of the desk. This gives fairly steady ambient lighting. I grew a dozen SCOBY’s for the Summer Fermentation Class that was held on June 29th 2015.

SCOBY Timelapse Video AVI Format 8 frames/sec

The video should be viewable most of the time unless I am servicing the Raspberry Pi or I pulled the plug on it during a nasty storm.