This tutorial describes how to make star trail photos that can be used in time-lapse videos. I go through the process of making a Photoshop action to batch edit star photos and offer a link to those who don’t want to make their own action.

Links mentioned in this video:

I’ve decided to start posting some video tutorials in addition to my written posts because I usually look for videos when I’m looking for help online. I’m going to gradually update some of my more popular posts with videos to augment the existing material. You can subscribe to my new Youtube channel to avoid missing any updates or new tutorials. I made this video in response to a question about the star trails Photoshop action I made and uploaded a couple of years ago. If there are any other topics you’d like me to cover, please send me an email through my contact page.

I’m also looking for ideas on how best to use these videos. Do many people read these posts at work or someplace else where they can’t watch a video? If so, I’ll work to add text tutorials below the videos.

If you use this action, please post a link to your video below. It takes about a day for me to approve each one because of the amount of spam comments I get. Thanks for watching and please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Picasa, Google’s free picture editor, is one of the easiest ways to create free time-lapse videos even though it lacks many advanced photo and video editing features. My step-by-step tutorial is below this demo video that I made with Picasa.

Beginning with Picasa

Begin by opening the folder you wish to use in Picasa. I’ve decided to work with some recent San Francisco skyline photos I took from Treasure Island.

If you’d like to edit the photos at this point, Picasa allows some minor changes. Select all the photos you wish to change and then click on “Picture” from the top menu and look under “Batch Edit.” Here you’ll be able to apply a few basic filters such as sharpening and some auto corrections.

Making the Movie

Once you’re done editing, make sure all files are selected and click on the “Create Movie Presentation” icon near the folder icon.

The photos will immediately render into a movie preview with editing options on the left side. Select “Time Lapse” under the “Transition Style” drop-down menu and then pick the video size and frame rate you want. American HD TV uses a 16:9 1080p size and a rate of 30 fps. Europe uses the same size but a 25 fps rate. You can use a smaller size and slower rate if you just want to watch the video on your computer. Set the frame rate by adjusting the slider bar to a range between 1/6 and 1/30 Sec. Select “Full frame photo crop” if your photos are a different aspect ratio than the video output you selected. This will crop the photos instead of resizing them with black bars on either side.

Final Edits

You can go ahead and make your video at this point or play around with some other options. Attach an audio track by clicking “Load” at the top of the “Movie” tab or change the default title under the “Slide” tab.

Once you’re done, click the green play button at the bottom for a rough preview of your video. If the video is how you’d like it, you’re ready to finish it.

Render and Export Your Video

Click the “Create Movie” button on the bottom of the left panel. Your movie will display as a draft in a new window with a progress bar off to the right side. Once Picasa’s done compiling the video, you can click “Back to Library” in the upper left corner to see your movie saved as a .wmv file within Picasa. Congratulations, you’re done. You can upload directly to YouTube or open it in a video editor.

If you found this tutorial helpful, why not share it with friends by clicking any of the buttons to the left. Thanks and please let me know if you have any questions.

Often mentioned as the “go-to” solution for time-lapse, QuickTime Pro has been used for years by professionals and amateurs alike. In this tutorial, I’ll explain why you might want to use QuickTime Pro, why other solutions are often better, and how to make your first time-lapse.

The Positive

QuickTime Pro has a few advantages over other software—it works on Macs and PCs, it doesn’t cost nearly as much as other editing programs, it’s fairly easy to use, and it allows you to save files in many different formats. This last reason is why I bought QuickTime Pro, which currently costs $29.99. I can save files in high quality formats for uploads to stock video websites and make sure they’re in the requested format.

The Negative

First, there’s the price. $30 isn’t much, but there are plenty of free PC alternatives such as VirtualDub or even Windows Live Movie Maker. Then there’s the interface. It’s not hard to use QuickTime Pro, but for $30 I’d like some additional editing options and a time line. If you go to Apple’s website to upgrade to QuickTime Pro, you’ll notice several comments reflecting this same view.

Prepping Your Photos

Because QuickTime Pro has very limited editing functions, I’d suggest prepping your photos before you begin. This could include cropping, straightening, color editing, etc. All of these things are easy using Photoshop and creating an action. I haven’t spent much time with the free photo editing program Gimp, but I imagine it has similar abilities.

Importing Your Photos

Begin by opening QuickTime Player. If this is your first time using this software, you might be surprised that the video editor is built into the movie player. I spent about five minutes looking for a separate program.

Click on File>Open image sequence… and find the folder with the images you want to use. At the bottom of the pop-up window, change the frame rate to a good estimate of what you think will work. 24fps is a good place to start if you’re unsure. Note that 15fps or below will show noticeable choppiness in the final video. You won’t be able to change this within QuickTime Pro once you’ve made a selection, so figuring out your frame rate before you start shooting will help. If you need something between 15fps and 24fps, you’ll have to edit the video in another program after you export it.

Once you’ve selected the frame rate, select and open the first image in the sequence. It may take a couple minutes for the images to render into a video.

For most cameras, the size of the pictures will far exceed the need for even HD video. Therefore, the video window that pops up will be much bigger than the screen size. To change the size, select View>Fit to Screen (Ctrl+3) in the video window. This resizes the window to fit the screen, but the video will still be jerky because of its size. For example, the photos I took with my 5 MP camera and later cropped created a video 2641 x 1486 and that takes up 286.66 MB for less than nine seconds of video. By comparison, a feature length movie can be compressed into reasonable quality at around 700 MB and even true HD video has a resolution of only 1920 x 1080.

Exporting the Video

Unfortunately, there’s no good way to preview your video at this stage. To see how it will look, you’ll need to export it. This is where things get a bit complicated as we pick different formats and compression filters. To keep things simple, I’m going to use the QuickTime format (.mov) because it’s standard to QuickTime and works on YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, and any number of other video hosting sites. If you want to export for stock, go to your company’s website for format specifications.

Click on File>Export (Ctrl+E), choose a file name and location, select your export file type, and then click the Options box. From the new settings window, we’ll focus on three things: Settings, Filter, and Size.

Click the Settings box if you want to change your compression filter. You can probably leave the filter type alone or select H.264 if you want a high quality video.

The Filter box offers limited choices but might be worth a look if you don’t plan to do any further editing.

Size is the most important of the three because most videos will be too big. Click on the box and you’ll see a menu similar to the one below.

I’ve selected HD 1920 x 1080 16:9 because it’s standard for television. Now I have to make a choice because I shot my photos in the standard 4:3 ratio and have to change to 16:9. I can either letterbox the video, which puts black bars on either side, or I can crop the video and lose the top and bottom. I usually crop to 16:9 before I import my videos, but for the sake of this tutorial I’m going to choose to crop. Make sure Preserve aspect ratio is checked so the video isn’t squished to size and click OK, OK, and Save. Your video will start rendering.

After a few minutes, you’ll be able to watch your new video. If it goes too fast or too slow, repeat this process and adjust the frame rate accordingly. Once you’re happy with the video, you can open it in another editing program to add music and effects or you can simply upload it to the web. My final video is 23.4 MB and eight seconds long. Music and credits were added with Windows Live Movie Maker.

If this tutorial helped, please consider a single click on any of the boxes in the slider to the left. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please leave me a message below and I’ll make sure to follow up.

One of the best reasons to use a Canon PowerShot camera for time lapse videos is the CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) firmware addon. This free piece of software increases the basic functions of these cameras to allow shooting in RAW and running programmable intervalometers, among other impressive tweaks.

While there are other guides to installing CHDK, such as this tutorial at PC Magazine or the official CHDK wiki, I feel that both of these are overly complicated for the casual computer user. Here is my bare-bones explanation of how I installed CHDK on my Canon PowerShot S3 IS.

A few caveats: CHDK only works for the Canon PowerShot line of point-and-shoot cameras and requires an SD memory card of <4gb (CHDK may work on cards larger than 4gb that are partitioned). This tutorial is for PC users. Mac users should visit the official CHDK Mac FAQ for installation information.

Definition of Terms

Throughout this post I’ll use a few terms that some readers might find confusing.  Here are some brief definitions:

• Hack – anything that extends a camera’s functions beyond what was originally intended by the manufacturer.  In this case, we’ll be using a software hack.
• Format – a way of erasing info from a memory card and preparing it for use in a camera.
• Firmware – this is the manufacturer’s original software that was installed on the camera in the factory.
• Addon – this is a (usually) small piece of software that doesn’t necessarily alter the original software but offers additional functions.

Cardtricks

Begin by inserting your camera’s memory card into your computer’s memory card slot.  This tutorial may not work if your camera is connected to your computer by a cable.  Most modern computers have memory card slots.

The next step in this procedure is to install Cardtricks.  This is a computer program designed to automatically format your memory card and install the CHDK software.  Cardtricks can be found here:  Card Tricks v1.44 (510 kB)

Once you’ve downloaded Cardtricks, double click the file to extract the program and then double click the new Cardtricks icon to run the program.  You should see this screen:

Once you have Cardtricks running, select the “auto” checkbox and then click on the picture of a memory card to select your card’s location.  If Cardtricks doesn’t lead you directly to the card, it can be found under “My computer.”

Important! The next step erases all data on your card.  Make sure you’ve uploaded your photos or they will be erased.

In Cardtricks, select “Format as FAT,” wait for it to finish, and then select “Make bootable.”

Check Your Camera’s Firmware Version

By selecting “Format as FAT,” there should now be a file on your memory card called “ver.req.”  This file tells your camera to display the firmware version number so that you’ll know which version of CHDK to download.

Remove the memory card from your computer and insert it into your camera.  Set the camera to playback mode before turning it on.  Hold down “function set” (possibly just “set”) and tap “display.”  The order of procedure is important and may require turning off the camera and restarting if done in a different order.  If all goes well, your camera should look like this:

In this picture, you can see that my firmware is version 1.00A for the S3 IS.

Now that you know the firmware version, remove the memory card and insert it back into the computer.

Installing CHDK

On the Cardtricks screen, select “Download CHDK.”  This will open a browser window with a list of all the different versions of CHDK.  Select the one that corresponds to your camera’s firmware to download it.

Back in Cardtricks, select “CHDK->card” and then select the zip file that you just downloaded.  Cardtricks will now install CHDK onto your memory card.  When the file transfer is complete, remove the memory card, slide the plastic slider to the “lock” position, and insert the card into the camera.  Even though the card is set to “lock,” it will still record photos.  The locked position simply tells the camera to boot from the card instead of running its original firmware.

Using CHDK

Start the camera in playback mode again and you should automatically see this screen:

After a second or two, the screen will return to its normal message.  Press the shortcut button on your camera (this may be an “S” in a box, have a picture of a printer next to it, or be a clear button with a light).  The text “<ALT>” should appear on the bottom of the screen.

Now when you press “menu,” a special CHDK menu will appear with a host of new features.

Next week I’ll discuss how to create an intervalometer script to use with CHDK so that you can begin recording time lapse videos.  For now, congratulations, you’ve finished the hardest part and are almost ready to make your first time lapse video.  (Update: Ultra Intervalometer post is finally up)