This post was last modified: 2012-02-27, 22:27 by HallvarG.

Hi everyone,

I have a question about image quality in my (very amateur) time lapse movies which I hope someone might help me with. In my time lapses I´m not always satisified with the «image quality» of the actual movie. Please see this test movie (1080p, fullscreen) to better understand my question:
http://youtu.be/lRtzGs2rXQU

In the first part (method 1, below) you can see a sort of «pixelated look» (in lack of a better word) in the shadows of the mountain on the lower left side. It´s better in part two (method 2, below). The indvidual pictures, however, don´t have this look. Why is this?

* that´s life - stop complaining!
* my hardware (e.g. my monitor just shows it like that)?
* software or workflow?
* any other suggestions?

Setup:
Nikon D7000 (14-bit raw, lossless compressed)
LightRoom 3.6 64-bit (for Mac)
LRtimelapse 1.6.1 with the free templates and presets
iMovie´11 9.0.4

This is my basic workflow:
Import in LightRoom
Guess metadata with LRtimelapse, save stubs and previews
Read metadata in LightRoom, edit keyframes, write metadata for key frames
Reload in LRtimelapse, make tranistions(linear in the test) and deflickering (default settings in the test)
Read metadata in LightRoom, and then export

I export the videos like this:
Method1: Click «LRTimelapse 24fps» under User Templates in the Template browser, and then click «Export Video» and select «1080p @24fps LRTimelapse (Full HD)»

Method 2: Click «LRTimelapse 24fps» under User Templates in the Template browser, and then click «Export Video» and select «1080p»

Then I import them in iMovie, and after editing, I export them as «HD 1080p» (H.264, 24fps, 20Mbps), and finally upload to youtube.

Any help is appreciated!
Best Regards
Hallvar

This post was last modified: 2012-02-27, 22:49 by Gunther.

Hi, as you can see from my video "Canary Skies" it is possible to get perfect quality.
Your workflow seems right so you are certainly losing quality along the way.

1.) I don't know what iMovie does
2.) I don't know what happens on the way to youtube.
3.) I don't know why your movie shakes.

You could try the PRO templates I provide to get higher quality out of Lightroom and watch the movie after exporting from Lightroom and before further processing to see if the problems are gone. But normally you should get a fairly good quality with the free templates as well.

Best regards
Gunther

Thanks!

I´m actually just talking about the "pixel look" (the camera shake is due to very high wind at the time of shooting). I´ve seen similar results in other videos of mine as well, but after checking my archives, it seems to only be present in the videos i made after I switched to Mac some weeks ago...

I heard from other users that imovie might not be the best choice in terms of video codecs...

Btw, I forgot to mention that the same "pixel look" was visible in the source video files exported from LightRoom too. I.e. when I watched them in QuickTime player (tested VLC also) I got the same look...

Anyway, I just tried out the pro templates, and they seem to give a much smoother result (at 1080p).

That's what I expected. If you want really smooth results they are the solution.