Create time lapse video from images

Install ffmpeg:

sudo apt install ffmpeg

Create timelapse indexfile:

sourcedir=$HOME/Pictures/timelapse

find "${sourcedir}" -iname "*.jpg" -type f | sort | sed "s/\(.*\)/file '\1'/g"  > "${sourcedir}/../files.txt"

Create the video:

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i "${sourcedir}/../files.txt" -r 25 -vcodec libx264 -crf 22 "${sourcedir}/../out.mp4"

Speed the video up (x 1/0.4), the resulting file will be smaller:

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i "${sourcedir}/../files.txt" -vf "setpts=(PTS-STARTPTS)*0.4" -r 30 -vcodec libx264 -crf 22 "${sourcedir}/../out_fast.mp4"

Crop:

ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i "${sourcedir}/../files.txt" -filter:v "setpts=(PTS-STARTPTS)*0.4" -filter:v "crop=1280:800:0:224" -r 25 -vcodec libx264 -crf 22 "${sourcedir}/../out_fast.mp4"

Options

Input indexfile 'files.txt':

 -f concat -safe 0 -i "files.txt"

These options allow for this indexfile format:

     file '/full/path/to/file1.jpg'
     file '/full/path/to/file2.jpg'
     ...

Video filter. Speedup video by (1 / 0.4):

 -vf "setpts=(PTS-STARTPTS)*0.4"

Output framerate:

 -r 30 

Output codec and quality setting 'Constant Rate Factor'. For x264, this means setting a value somewhere between 18 and 26 for this CRF. The default is 23, and higher values will give you worse quality.

 -vcodec libx264 -crf 22

Sources:

• https://superuser.com/questions/431953/convert-old-videos-to-have-smaller-sizes
• https://davidwalsh.name/video-speed
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10366138/how-to-specify-unordered-image-list