LRTimelapse Forum

A I dreaming? This is a multi month project (its actually 3-4 years, but I am just doing one shot that been doing 1min intervals (64gb per week) for 3-4 months.

I used lightroom to check exposure vlaues to cull 200,000 down to 50,000 generally useable. There is still exposure variations with clouds etc. I'd like to use the deflicker in lrtimelapse to smooth out the exposure transitions and deflicker. I had used previous verisons of lr timelapse and large folders of photos. I was even able to work from collections without rendering out. Taking 50,000 photos out as a renamed sequeunce into a new folder for lrtimelapse took about 12 hours on usb3 single 7200rpm external (internal is a new mbpr with fast ssd).

Now that I have a single folder, lrtimelapse latest version goes most of the way through the first steps of reading the directory etc in about the time i'd expect. (maybe 10-15 mins per step) Then it gets to "Checking/fixing XMP-Metadata". Petrol bar goes all the way to the right, and then it chugs through about 1 image every 30 seconds. The other parts of the initial process was much quicker.

Is there some sort of reasonable maximum limit to that last step before keyframes wizard? It kind of looks like its getting bogged down even before it reachs a 100 images. (standard 6mb gopro jpegs). I could divide it up into say 10,000 per folder. But not really 100 per folder. Is it likely to work any better at 10,000 per folder or I have got some other issue going on?

Cheers

Kieran

Hmm, I would have to see the log file after the attempt (info/log).
You might try to turn off "Auto-Fix XMP" in the expert settings for that sequence.

Thanks for the prompt reply. I'll try with that setting off. My only option was to exit, and the log is cleared. So I'll get to the same point again with that setting off, it will take approx 30mins I think.
Cheers

Ok, have sent the log (minus many pages of the same thing in the middle) to support.

Same thing happening with that setting off. It no longer says up top trying to fix xmp data, but the reality is, that is is going down the left side calculating Mean data at the same slow rate, and the interface is mostly unusuable.

It does let me hit the next step - keyframes wizard in the deflicker workflow (I am pretty sure i skip initialize). Which then says shot with automatic metering, don't use holy grail, use deflicker workflow (which I am using).

Do I skip keyframe wizard and just save xmp data..... I presume the keyframes will be trick and timeconsuming for 50k files...

Well, despite the gui being usuably slugish while it calculates means down the left now, I did manage to push initialize, and now it init metdata and filling in the rest of the columns. REALLY slowly. I'd expect at the rate its going its going to take 8 hours probably.

I'll post back here in the morning. Still transferring exif to xmp at moment.

So far Gunther has given me a tweak to java machine to give LR some more memory. Its fixed the gui responsiveness. It using about 2-3gb of my 16gb (gave lrtl 8) of ram.

It was a memory issue. By default LRTimelapse's Java Machine gets assigned 2GB of ram on Mac (on windows this is handled dynamically). For such unusual long sequences this might not be enough. In that case is necessary to increase the memory.

Right click on LRTimelapse icon -> show contents. Find the file info.plist and open with the associated editor. Change the parameter -Xmx to a higher value, for example 4096M (do this only if you have enough ram available on that machine).

And so for anyone following or coming across this thread in the future. Everything has sped up.

I also followed this advice : "since all previews are being loaded into memory. You might try to lower the preview size as well in the expert settings. Set it to 300x200, that should be sufficient. Then raise the memory for the java machine even more."

(I gave it 14gb, but probably 10gb would have been fine for 10k sequences)

Which helped. And I split them into 10k bunches. Which is a lot more work waiting and pushing buttons in the middle of the night to kick off the next sequence. Creating previews is now the longest wait, at 1hr 40min per 10k file sequence.

I also now have the pro version, and if you are doing construction timelapse, it worth it for the select by criteria (to pick out the shadow shots) and the prores export saves another step, and the motion blur is a nice touch to have in the same step as well (for certain types of sequences. In this case it makes it look like all the structure built itself and there was just ghosts of construction workers and machines flying around. Nice effect.)

Thanks Gunther, great product!

Kieran

How do you pick just the shadow shots when using the "select by criteria" command in the pro version? Manually? There should be an option for it when selecting the desired threshold.

Did you watch my tutorialy for the Long Term time lapses?
http://lrtimelapse.com/tutorial/long-ter...ime-lapse/

I explain the feature there. You can set the bandwith to clip shadows and highlights at the same time, or you could just choose to select only shadows or only highlights, there is a checkbox that will unlink the sliders.