This post was last modified: 2024-10-14, 06:39 by sumarimike.

Greetings,

Thanks for the amazing software and support. This year I captured a May through October timelapse of a garden growing via my GoPro Hero 11. Unfortunately, a setting was not saved when I started it and the entire 6-month time lapse was saved as several mp4 videos rather than individual RAW photos.

Nevertheless, I saw there is a video file import in LRTimelapse (current version, 7) and when I tested it on the first file, it imported and split the file into 25,000 jpgs. Great!

GoPro saves a timelapse of that duration as 10GB video files, named sequentially. For my timelapse, there are 4 video files. When I attempted to import all 4 videos, I received a warning box (see attachment). To get here:
1) File > Import
2) Selected "Video File" tab
3) Selected "Select video file(s)..."
4) I navigated to the source directory and selected the 4 video files with ctrl-click (I am on Windows 11).
5) After selecting ok, the warning pops up.

If I proceed (yes), then 4 destination folders are created, each named after the 4 video files and each folder contains the jpg files created from that video.

I suppose my question is process-related: Is there a way to have all these files merged into one folder? Do I import them into the separate folders and then use a move function? What might be the best approach for processing these 4 videos, now converted to JPG?

I did look at several tutorials (basic, extended basic, and import) but wasn't able to find out. I did try importing them one at a time into the same destination folder, but this resulted in an overwrite. I tried also to use the "...or paste the path:" but received an "error -13" when I clicked ok.

Thanks again for an amazing piece of software! I processed one other much smaller timelapse of the aurora so far with excellent results. Appreciate your understanding as I learn not only your software, but taking good timelapses to begin with.

Kind regards,
Michael Friedman

Well, I may have answered my own question. I started watching the LRT Long Term Timelapse video (the construction site in Norway) and realized that the 4 separate folders of JPGs created by importing the videos is actually my new source. So, I moved them to my source directory and then ran the importer once more, and like magic, LRTimelapse saw all 98,851 files across all the folders and is currently importing them into my destination (working) folders. So, here I am posting the result for posterity.

Yes, that a good workflow ;-)
However, it might be tedious and rather slow working on so many JPGs... JPGs are not the most performant file type to work with in LRTimelapse, especially not with such a huge amount of images.
In the EULA LRTimelapse is specified to officially support folders with up to 10,000 images each. So keep that in mind, after your renaming process you sould consider splitting up the huge new folder via "new folder from selection" (right mouse click on a selection) - then filter the individual subfolders and later merge the results via "Move" together again.

Thanks, Gunther! I see what you mean. Saving and other operations are slow, even with a new computer. I'll break them up and do the filtering and other work there. I'm excited to see how the timelapse turn out, and the various edits I can make to show the growth of the garden, or the seasonal lighting changes. Many possibilities!