Hello,

Thank you for your magnificent work on this application, but in recent times I have decided to use LRT to generate hyper lapses after a wedding.
This works great bar one feature that makes the export a bit wonky and I have not found a way to sort it out.

It seems that when you set the video output, LRT grabs the image and stretches it to match the format set.
This is not normally an issue in a timelapse, but a big issue with a combination of portrait and landscape photos.

Timewise, it's unfeasible to split it into portrait/landscape exports as there's so many.

Would it be rude to ask that there would be an option within LRT to retain the aspect ratio of a photo and fit the picture into the frame by applying black bars?

Thank you for your time reading this. I did a quick search but did not find a request along these lines.

See preview
https://i.imgur.com/dyWSEFS.png

Regards
Evan

So you are mixing landscape and portrait in the timelapse? This is indeed a very special use case which isn't supported by LRTimelapse - but I think you might be the only one using LRTimelapse for this purpose. :-)

Currently I'm very hesitant to change anything in the way the rendering / cropping etc. works in LRT after the big redesign in 6.5 which was quite complex - it's streamlined for "real" timelapses and it works perfectly now for "real timelapse" (sequence with equal image dimensions and AR/Orientation) despite it's complexity. Check out my Video about LRT 6.5, where I explained the challenges involved with this.

Additionally, unfortunately the renderer (ffmpeg) that LRTimelapse uses, doesn't support different aspect ratios, it would usually just abort when it finds them in a sequence. Therefore, your request would require a preprossessing of the images before rendering. Let's see if there are others interested in this, but for now, I'm not really motivated to implement this given all the implications it could cause... Sorry...

However, I think there is an easy workaround for you: Just export the sequence from Lightroom as JPGs (best use a custom export template, not the ones from LRTimelapse, since they would complain about different AR) - then drag that exported folder to a video editing program which might support different aspect ratios. Most video programs support image sequences. I think in Davinci Resolve for example, there is a feature to automatically zoom in to avoid black bars also.

Thanks for the reply Gunther.
Yes I am mixing portrait and landscape images together.

I understand it's not the intended purpose, but hence the question.
There was hope it might have been an easy thing to implement as it avoids having to learn yet another piece of software

All the best.

Now I remember where I got the idea for this.
It was the timelapse preview in the top left corner before export.
The preview will force "FIT" the photo to match the window height, but when you export, it squishes the photo to match the AR.

See in the preview
https://i.imgur.com/KmW3EGj.png Portrait and https://i.imgur.com/Z46uvMo.png Landscape both fit in the window.
The preview was correct, hence why I thought it was possible in the export

Unfortunatly the preview is what LRTimelapse can calculate, but the encoder itself does it differently and requires the images to be in the same aspect ratio. I'm really sorry, but for this very special use case you would need to use the workaround that I mentioned above.