Stop Motion/Time Laps Video PART 2 - Command Line

StopMotion is to slow to load my projects.  There are examples on the web of how to create time laps videos from the command line but they either do not work or are not effective for what I need.  Reading up on Mencoder at this Link I think that the command offers a solution.  At the bottom of the page it recommends options for .H264 and MPEG4 encoding.

MPEG4

mencoder -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:mv0:trell:v4mv:cbp:last_pred=3:predia=2:dia=2:vmax_b_frames=2:vb_strategy=1:precmp=2:cmp=2:subcmp=2:preme=2:qns=2 -mf type=png:fps=15 mf://*.png -o MPEG4.15fps.avi

This worked but the quality wasn’t great and I couldn’t find examples of how to improve it.

MJPEG

mencoder -nosound -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mjpeg -o MJPEG.15fps.avi -mf type=png:fps=15 mf://*.png

Good quality but a very big file and this is almost exactly as the example found here.

.H264

mencoder -nosound -ovc x264 -x264encopts subq=6:partitions=all:8x8dct:me=umh:frameref=5:bframes=3 -mf type=png:fps=15 mf://*.png -o H264.15fps.avi

I altered examples found on the Internet for .H264 and PNG, but removed options b_pyramid:weight_b.  Good quality and small file, best of both worlds.  Not perfect but without more information it is the best I can come up with.  I added -vf scale=1920:1080 for HD resizing.

Conclusion

I need to read more.  Somewhere there is an example with the settings I need for better video output.  StopMotion is a good GUI tool but is very slow.  The command is much faster if not easy to setup.

HD Video in Ubuntu 10.x using OpenShot Video Editor

After working with the many of the available video editor software packages available to Ubuntu I’ve decided that OpenShot Video Editor is the one for me. While the GUI could use small improvements like Saved Settings and Keyboard Shortcuts, it is the only software with acceptable video output. Here are the settings that I used.

1. Open OpenShot Video Editor and create a new project. In the project settings choose HDV for the Project Profile, any type will do.

2. When exporting video, red button, us the second tab, the first is useless. I chose the following settings:

Video Settings
Video Format: AVI
Video Codec: MPEG4
Bit Rate/ Quality: 15.00 Mb/s - HDTV Qaulity


Audio Settings
Audio Codec: MP2
Sample Rate: 48000
# of Channels: 2
Bit Rate/ Qaulity: 192 kb/s - Better Quality














With these settings I was able to edit video from my mission trip to Haiti and export acceptable quality.

Creating Stop Motion (Time Laps) Videos in Ubuntu 10.x

I'm back from Port Au Prince, Haiti. While I there I captured Time Laps photography of our team building a dormitory. Now that I’m back its time to put these photos together into a video. In windows I could use MakeAVI but it has limited encoding codecs and no MPEG4 support. That means no 1080p video output. I want a Linux solution in Ubuntu.

First I tried using mencoder from the command line and found that it didn’t support JPG. This issue I couldn’t immediately fix but was able to convert all my photos to PNG quickly.

MenCoder Links
Timelapse Photography with your spare Ubuntu Box and Digital Camera
How to create a time lapse video with Ubuntu



Photos converted, the above guides allowed me to get video exported but created but with terrible quality. After searching around I found code snippets explaining how to add bitrate settings to my command line.

How-To instructions (for mencoder): At the bottom of the page is a $opt variable setting including vbitrate control. I used only the vbitrate setting and left the rest alone.



Stop Motion
Amid all this work I discovered a GUI package called Stop Motion. It is available in Ubuntu’s application installer and provides a nice front-end. Unfortunately it doesn’t work immediately. 


1. Open Stop Motion and go to Setting -> Configure Stopmotion

2. Third tab over, select Mencoder for MPEG4. By default, Start Encoder text field, is setup to use JPG which is not supported. I changed all JPG to PNG since my photos were now converted to PNG.

3. Next delete the $opt and put in vbitrate=15000000. This bitrate number is a complete estimation and based on no calculation.

Start Encoder Field
Before

mencoder -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=msmpeg4v2:vpass=1:$opt -mf type=jpg:fps=8 -o "$VIDEOFILE" "mf://$IMAGEPATH/*.jpg"

After
mencoder -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vpass=1:vbitrate=15000000 -mf type=png:fps=15 -o "$VIDEOFILE" "mf://$IMAGEPATH/*.png"

4. Now select Apply and Close

With these new settings I'm able to add my .PNG files and export stop motion video with excellent MPEG 4 quality.