View Full Version : Timelapse tank! The Timetank!
Well, I was a little bored today (yeah yeah,bloomin students and all that gubbins!) and so started off trying to get a day long timelapse movie of the progression of my Pistol shrimp & gobies burrows. Usually it starts off as a small hole, gets larger, and then shrinks down, slowly changing shape/location through the day. However mid-day it was becoming evident that they didn't want to play today.
So from about 3-5 I set the camera up to take a photo every 30 seconds, for 2 hours. Sadly the battery couldn't last after the earlier onslaught, and so it was 14-15 images short in the end (225 taken still!)
Anyway, the end product was a 15 second long clip showing the movement patterns of my turbos and hermits, as well as my gorgonia slowly coming out of its sulk after I'd given the front and right glass a bit of an algae wipe (trying to get coralline up the left piece).
Other things I noticed in the video I hadn't before, was the slight pulsing behaviour of my large zoa frag on the substrate, I don't think it was caused by something scurrying around the outside! Other thing was the sand in the rear right corner, where the shrimp and goby live. If you look closely it's almost like a constant landslide, the shrimp never getting caught in the pic but the sand slowly falling down and being replaced!
The page on my site with the movie embedded is here:
http://www.zpyder.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=38
And the direct link to the movie is here:
http://www.zpyder.co.uk/videos/timelapse/timetank.avi
Reason I'm posting both is that the plugin I'm using on my site won't let me change the image dimensions, and so the height is about 15 pixels less than the actual movie!
Hope you guys enjoy, I've watched this a dozen times now, following each critters path. It really does go to show just how active the clean up crew is!
nice movie m8 great stuff!
Great idea and implementation.
Why does the sand look like its flowing in the top right hand corner of the bed?
Snowsurfer
14-01-07, 21:38
Thats very cool id be tempted to try doing something similar what program did you use to stitch them together ?
Not sure i can set my camera to take a shot every 30 seconds either. Something ive never thought of doing ill have to play with it and see.
Thats fantastic. What camera did you use?
Great time lapse movie. I loved the high-speed snails and hermit crabs :D
That is brilliant!!
As above,the cleanup crew are the stars :)
Chris
Great idea and implementation.
Why does the sand look like its flowing in the top right hand corner of the bed?
Reckon thats the shrimp/goby paring?
mikeadams1985
14-01-07, 21:56
:o
fantastic!
im gonna be doing one of these soon :D
Ayuh, it's the shrimp. I'm not quite sure why it looks how it does. Obviously the time it takes for 1 grain to get from the top to the bottom in the movie is several minutes in real life! However the way the shrimp goes about his business it really is a case of 2 steps forward 1 step back. he shovels a load of sand out and as he goes back into the burrow some bits fall down again etc!
Glad everyone likes it! I'm tempted to try slightly faster (15 seconds) over the whole day, or a longer time period, but with a slightly faster framerate in playback too, to give a smoother video.
Camera wise I used a 400D, connected up to my laptop with a USB extension cable, and used the EOS Utility that came with it (In the tools menu there's an interval shooting option)
About the only thing the video is missing is audio, I think the Benny Hill theme tune would suit it quite well (especially with the hermit looking like he falls down through the zoa frag in the upper left near the start!)
Ohh, and the technical nitty gritty stuff.
To stitch the images together, I first used photoshop and create a batch job to trim and resize each of the 225 photos from 3000x wide to 600 wide (but saved at max quality, no compression yet)
Then I opened up Macromedia Flash, and set the canvas size to the same size as the photos. Flash has a handy little tool in it that if you import an image to stage, it detects if it's in a sequence. Make sure the stage is centered, and import the first image to stage. It then puts each image in a keyframe in order!
Next bit, I exported the movie as an avi. I then opened it in a free program call VirtualDub, and used a Microsoft codec for the compression, the video file went from an uncompressed 85mb down to 2.5xmb!
And thats the process in a nutshell.
I like to experiment with stuff like this and I've slowly picked up a few things through trial and error. Main thing when you're sorting your photos out is to take them at a high resolution and reduce later(it's a pain and takes ages, but gives best quality) and to not compress them until the last stages (compressing the images then importing into flash and then compressing the movie just further reduces the quality till it's horrible!)
Only other thing is the playback framerate, 15 frames per second is average/ok. Flash defaults to 12 (so you need to change this in the movie settings before exporting!) 20 is a bit nicer and more fluid. So that should give an estimation on number of photos to take. If you say 15 frames a second, for 5 seconds you need 75 photos etc!
It'd be great to see other peoples tanks in timelapse, starfish etc!
It's got me thinking that my Marine Biology lecturer might be interested in the technique for his limpets (He really does like limpets) especially as they're meant to have a circular grazing pattern etc!
Yes YES...Do more of this, i like :)
Chris
I've done this before with an infra red camera on my son when he was about 1yr old to see how he slept at night, i've also used the infra red time lapse on the tank at night with limited success.
Never thought of using the camera during the day though for some reason, will have to give it a go, if I get anything worth showing, i'll post it up.
:)
great idea really cool vid:cool:
Reef bloke
15-01-07, 00:29
Excellent!
Thats ace mate, nice one, loved it! :D
Prometheus
15-01-07, 01:02
thats really groovy :D .
do some some more i loved it :p
Great job, Z and a superb idea!:D You're right, though, you've really got too much time on your hands:p . Could do the same looking into the shrimp's burrow?
Quality mate, had to watch it a few times though cos I kept focusing on one critter/coral and missing the rest lol!
Great job, Z and a superb idea!:D You're right, though, you've really got too much time on your hands:p . Could do the same looking into the shrimp's burrow?
That was the original plan! However each day it's a lucky pick where the burrow will apppear from under a rock, and I got it wrong yesterday! I'll give it another stab later. What I'm thinking of doing though is a timelapse of my gorgonia, closer, and zoas when they go from retracted to fully extended, making it smoother of course!
Excellent!
Cant wait for more... :)
Jay
come on then, what you waiting 4:p :D
how do you set the cam up to take pics every 30secs?
43 mins with 1 pic per min. The sequence is only 4 secs long, so i have put it on repeat for about 10secs
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b134/Paulmalsop/th_Untitled.jpg (http://s18.photobucket.com/albums/b134/Paulmalsop/?action=view¤t=Untitled.flv)
During that video, I spotted a lazy snail, hardly moved - return it to lfs? :D :D :p
Nice and original post mate! :) would never have thought to do a fast-movie!
neilharris
17-01-07, 22:15
Really cool. Love the zoas closing and opening with the hermits walking over them;) .
About the only thing the video is missing is audio, I think the Benny Hill theme tune would suit it quite well (especially with the hermit looking like he falls down through the zoa frag in the upper left near the start!)
Ask and you shall receive ;)
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b134/Paulmalsop/Fish%20Tanks/2ft%20reef%20cube/th_Benny.jpg (http://s18.photobucket.com/albums/b134/Paulmalsop/Fish%20Tanks/2ft%20reef%20cube/?action=view¤t=Benny.flv)
Much better, cheers dude!
Prometheus
23-01-07, 00:00
more more more , even the wife loved it :D
Introducing a 10 sec vid of a Zoa colony. Starts off with them all (mostly) fully retracted after I gave them a little stroke.
(click the pic)
http://zpyder.co.uk/videos/timelapse/zoathumb.jpg (http://www.zpyder.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=89)
By my dodgy maths every second is the equivalent of 3 mins 40 secs.
a slight "pulse" is still noticeable in the colony, which I first spotted in the original timelapse. Kinda interesting, as there's nothing disturbing them, and the pule I guess must be about every 5-10 mins or so, just a slight mass closing of polyps?
Really want to try something like my gorgonia or trumpet coral, but the gorgonia moves about too much in the current, and the trumpet just sits there!
loving these mate, you should do a feature length film
There's not much to feature in my tank!
brilliant stuff ,.. well impressed
Lol! Loving the cleaner shrimp in the background as well. Fantastic.
fair play bud, i bet very few ppl have ever seen their tank that way before.
wish my camera did that :(
Love it! :) Another great clip, Thanks
Jay
wish my camera did that :(
Many cams do! might be worth looking on the net for a definitive yes/no, as my old pentax, it was 18 months before I stumbled across the setting in the config menu! :)
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