Timelapse ?

jfish303

I am doing a large landscape project and want to create a timelapse

I looking at the setting and think I have the following. Movie capture - capture movie continuously with a capture rate of 1 frame per second and a playback rate of 24 frames per second. I have the recompress video option checked. Under the create new can I set this to 45 days so I get one file. If power is lost to the computer or a restart would I lose all the data for the previous days? Also, by default where is the file stored or where can I upload the file(s). Currently all my motion captures go to a dropbox folder but that does not appear to be an option under the upload menu.

Thanks for helping this novice

jfish303

Edit : Figured out how to do the local storage part by reading the manual.

Ben

The first thing to work out is what capture rate is optimal for you. If you are capturing continuously at 1fps and playing back at 24fps, and your project is 45 days long, then your resultant movie will be 45 hours long, which is presumably far too long! You'll probably want a frame rate of 10x-100x less than this (i.e. a capture rate of 0.1fps-0.01fps, which equates to 10-100 seconds between frames).

Next is to work out the optimum way to capture and assemble frames. Getting SecuritySpy to capture a movie probably isn't best. It will split the movie file every midnight (for reasons of file management, SecuritySpy organises files into daily chunks). What I would suggest is to use the "Image Capture" option under Preferences > Cameras > Continuous Capture. Here you can choose the number of seconds between image captures.

Then, after the project finishes, manually put all these captured files into one folder, and use something like Time Lapse Assembler to create the final timelapse movie.

To ensure good quality, you should set a high JPEG compression quality under Preferences > Compression in SecuritySpy (e.g. 70).

By default, captured files are stored in the ~/SecuritySpy/Captured Files/ folder (within your Home folder). But you can change this if you wish under Preferences > Storage. You can set this to your Dropbox folder, if you want these images backed up automatically to Dropbox.

Make sure that SecuritySpy won't automatically remove the files by setting the auto-delete settings under Preferences > Storage to appropriate values (e.g. turning off the "Delete old files by age" option, and making sure there is plenty of free space on the capture drive, so that the "delete old files by available space" threshold won't be crossed.

If there is a power cut, you will not lose the image files. Set the Mac to reboot automatically after a power cut via the Energy Saver system preference, and set up SecuritySpy for autonomous operation so that it will come back and continue recording automatically after power is restored.

jfish303

Ben,

Thank you. The support of your product in nothing short of amazing. One last question. I have a custom schedule set but for the continuous capture but the program doesn't seem to be respecting the daily stop time and just records to midnight. Any thoughts?

Ben

Happy to help!

There is no known bug with the schedule functionality, so what you are describing is probably a settings issue. So that I can check your settings, could you please email us and include SecuritySpy's debug file (SecuritySpy menu > Debug submenu > Create Debug File On Desktop) as well as a screenshot showing your custom schedule. Also please let me know the name of the camera in question. Thanks.