I have now rendered a few timelapses with LR5 and have found an issue where I get some really strange artifacts and digital distortion or glitches in my final render. I’m not sure why this happening. Any help in getting this squared away would be awesome.

Here is a link to one of the videos with artifacts:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/h8bk4qy6zafby...PodZa?dl=0

Your video is very juddery, the trees move a lot, the pan is very fast that means the mp4 encoder seems to have to little bandwith to accomodate all of those changes.
Try setting the quality higher, to provide more bandwith. You could also use ProRes (with LRT Pro) since this will not create artifacts because it uses a much weaker (nearly lossless) compression.

In any case, next time try to do it better when shooting already: always use an ND filter to blur movements, make panning much slower, etc. This will lead to videos that are much more visual appealing and help the encoder to get everything in the provided bandwidth.

Hey Gunther,

Thanks for the response. However, this isn't terribly helpful. I have shot and edited maybe over 100 timelapses using LRT and I have *never* had this issue until upgrading to the most recent version of LRT.

I didn't upload the other TL I did here because the file size was enormous and I'm in some remote areas with dial-up internet but that other file had this same artifacting in it. I do quite a few drivelapses where I set a GoPro to shoot once a second or once every 2 seconds. That is a lot of frenetic, fast movement. I have never once had artifacts like this show up in those kinds of timelapses, timelpases that by your accounting up above happens because of the mp4 encoder has little bandwidth to accommodate all those changes. I'm sorry, Gunther, but that can't be the explanation given how many of these I have done that have even MORE changes/movement than this and have never once had these issues.

To further reassert the severity of this issue, it has also shown up in an astrolapse I did with zero movement of the camera.

I have rendered some of these timelapses at the highest quality and while my astrolapses seem to not have anymore of the artifacting, drivelapses do. Why?

I've been a loyal customer of yours since 2012 (I think?) and have loved and recommended this program to a number of other photographers wanting to get into timelapse photography. I'd love to get some kind of concrete steps I can take to fix this issue that don't involve me spending more money on a "pro" version as I've never had these problems before and I've never had a pro version of this software.


P.S. I'm well aware of using ND filters that allow you to drag the shutter and create smoother timelapses.

It's interesting that you say you are having this in all your timelapses, since others haven't. So there must be something, you are doing differently.
You've sent me a very bad example and that's what lead me to my conclusion.
If course I'm willing to find a solution for you, but I've no crystal ball that why I have to guess based on the information that I get.

Please send me a Screenshot of your render settings to start with. Then send me an intermediary sequence (zip one of the LRT_ folders) via FromSmash or WeTransfer to support(at) lrtimelapse.com.

Other things to try:
Set Standard Gamut in the render Dialog
Set Force 16:9 in the render dialog. Sometimes certain aspect ratios of the original files combined with high resolutions could exceed the bandwidth of the encoder also and lead to strange effects.

Thanks you and will do. However, it'll be a week or longer. Internet in the Yukon is pretty slow.

Ok, you can send me a short sequence, just enough so that I can reproduce the problem.

Hi Gunther

Here is a file where the artifacting happens on the left side of the screen. Admittedly not the prettiest timelapse...

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/84zrioa2qeibv...GDica?dl=0

Included as well are screenshots of my render settings.

This post was last modified: 2020-12-21, 09:55 by Gunther.

Most likely the reason for your artifacts is, that you are rendering mp4 files outside the specifications. Often there is an orange warning on the bottom right, telling you, that those files might have issues playing.
On some videos, with slow movements only, where the encoder does not need too much bandwidth, there might not be any issues at all. But with very fast videos like yours with many changes, you'll quickly exceed the limits that MP4 can handle.

Background is that MP4 by definition only can handle a certain amount of pixels in total. So if you render in 4K UHD, you should not render in a low aspect ratio like 3:2 or 4:3 - if you use 16:9 (via "force 16:9"), you'll have less pixels in total, the warning will go away and your video will play perfectly.
So either you lower the resolution in total (3K for example, then you can render in 3:2 or 4:3, or, you crop the video to 16:9 in 4K UHD.
If the problems persist, try increasing the render quality.

Bottomline: Fast movements plus exceeding the specs of MP4 (orange warning) are likely to cause such artefacts.

All of those limitations are due to the way, MP4 is specified. If you use ProRes (LRTimelapse Pro required) those limitations will not be present.

Also check my post about which Video Players are the best and which to avoid: https://forum.lrtimelapse.com/Thread-whi...-rendition

Greetings everyone.
I believe that the great advantage of LRTIMELAPSE is its technology that facilitates the editing of frames, and, mainly, light smoothing in works that involve changes in exposure.

However I already had some problems with rendering. I don't have the pro version. The output I develop to give maximum quality and avoid LRTIMELAPSE rendering issues is to do this work in AFTER EFFECTS.

I render my timelapses in RAW in AFTER EFFECTS. The quality difference between doing Lrtimelapse and doing in AE is drastic.

Do the following. After all the process done in Lrtimelapse and Lightroom, Open AE, import a photo of the sequence from the folder in RAW, during the import choose only one photo (the first one) and choose "sequence camera RAW".
AE will import the entire sequence.
Go and export in the format you want, within the possibilities that already exist in the program.
The file, as it is a RAW rendering, will leave your giant file. But with impeccable quality.

My suggestion for solving the file size is to throw this AE-rendered file into your editing program (premier, vegas, final cut x, etc) and re-render it with the formats you normally use.

if you want to follow my results, I put my timelapses in IG @nandopaztimelapse.

Big hug

Nando, if you get better quality from the AE renderer, you are doing something wrong. Most likely some color management issues, because you go the "easy" route in AE without Color Management.
LRTimelapse uses ffmpeg for rendering which is one of the best renders available, it has lots of options.
In LRTimelapse I try to to the best to offer the best quality possible in a simple workflow.
But since I offer advanced options like non-standardized aspect ratios and Rec-2020 color space, there is also a chance that users will do it wrong and get unexpected results.

Bottomline: if you want to go using After Effects, do so. Youll get good results.
If you want to sort out your problems with the LRTimelapse renderer, I'm open for that - at the end you'll get the same or even better results with much less hassle and a cleaner workflow. If that wasn't so, I would also be rendering in AE.

Let me know, best open a new thread, if you want to discuss any problems you are facing. Please tell me exactly which settings you are using for rendering, which player etc. Maybe you should first check out the faq there are already a lot information about how to render with LRTimelapse: https://lrtimelapse.com/faq/