Today I wanted to try to make a time lapse video. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t cooperating.

I put my Canon Powershot S100 on a tripod and aimed it out the back window. I started the CHDK time lapse program with a 30 second interval.1 Then, 141 pictures later, I turned the camera off.2

I used Picasa to put the pictures on my computer and export them at 1000 pixels wide. I cropped the images to 16×9 aspect ratio3 using IrfanView in batch mode and converted the cropped images to an AVI file using RAD Video Tools. I uploaded the AVI to YouTube.

I was surprised to see cloud movement in the resulting video. Watching out the window didn’t reveal any movement.

I also tried a bunch of online animated GIF converters, but using only 30 of the images resulted in an animated GIF 1.81 MB large!

1I used a long interval because I couldn’t see any cloud movement. In retrospect, I should have gone with a 10 second interval.
2The battery indicator was blinking its warning. If I do this much more, I’m going to need another power source for the camera.
3This seems to be the right aspect ratio to avoid getting black bands on the side of the video on YouTube.
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