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It's funny. Laugh. Media Movies Technology

LA to Oregon at Mach 9 569

Posted by michael from the take-dramamine-before-watching dept.
Kallahar writes "Last April I hooked up a video camera to my front bumper and drove from Los Angeles to Oregon. The video is finally done; it's sped up 95x which makes the trip a mere 6 minutes long. To do the recording I hooked up a VCR inside the car and recorded in real time, then captured the entire thing to the hard drive and changed the framerate of the avi. The camera and VCR only cost about $50 total, which makes for a fairly affordable hobby/art project."
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LA to Oregon at Mach 9 More

LA to Oregon at Mach 9

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  • Big file (Score:5, Funny)

    by tpearson ( 621275 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:00AM (#9312173)
    Posting a link to a 65mb file on your own site is brave.

    • Re:Big file (Score:5, Funny)

      by Yorrike ( 322502 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:10AM (#9312239) Journal
      He should do a movie called: "Slashdot posting to server crash at mach 9".
    • Well, on the "backup site" i'm getting over 340 KB/s. He's faring quite well indeed, and there's already been enough time for a nice slashdotting.

    • Freecache link (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lord Prox ( 521892 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:39AM (#9312378) Homepage
      Mirror [freecache.org]

  • You realize (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:00AM (#9312174)
    That I can prove you were speeding using this, right?

    • He seems a dangerous driver (serious) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @03:12AM (#9312507)
      You made a good joke, but having watched the video, the guy does appear to be a very impatient driver. Time after time after time, he runs right up to someone's bumper in the left lane, follows very closely for some time, then winds up passing them on the right.

      I spend a lot of my time doing interstate driving. As such, I realize that there are plenty of assholes out there doing 65mph in the passing lane where the speed limit is 70. But drivers who tailgate in the passing lane (or any lane, really) are IMO just as much of a risk for accidents.

      When you're in the far left lane, and you're gaining quickly on the car in front of you, you should either move to the immediate right lane and complete your pass at a safe distance, or if conditions don't allow this, slow the fuck down and back it off. Riding the bumper of the person in front of you because they're driving too slowly is NOT the proper response. Nine times out of ten, the driver in front of you is not going to "get the message" and yield his position.

      This is a great video, I just wish it didn't depict so many examples of poor and unsafe driving.

      • Re:He seems a dangerous driver (serious) (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ComaVN ( 325750 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @03:45AM (#9312605)
        I didn't study it as closely as you did, but I've seen more of these time-lapse driving things, and it ALWAYS looks like the driver is a speeding maniac, brakes too late, makes erratic turns etc.

        I think it's the same effect you get when driving as a passenger: when you cannot control the vehicle, a distance you would judge as safe when driving yourself, suddenly seems a bit close.

        Add the (seemingly) extreme decelleration (sp?) and erratic steering, and it looks a lot more extreme than it really is.

        You make a good point about safety though. Anyway, it seems to be human nature to respond to people pushing from behind by slowing down.

        What I usually do, is use the turn signal to indicate I want to pass, and if that doesn't work, a brief flash of the headlights usually does the trick. There is a difference in road behaviour in different countries though: In Germany, this works great, in France or The Netherlands, not as good. Germans are used to people passing at 190km/h.

        Of course, our situation in Europe is a bit worse, because it's illegal to overtake on the right.

        • Re:He seems a dangerous driver (serious) (Score:5, Funny)

          by mpmansell ( 118934 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @03:56AM (#9312637)

          Of course, our situation in Europe is a bit worse, because it's illegal to overtake on the right.

          Unless you are in the UK where its the only side you are allowed to pass on :)

        • Re:He seems a dangerous driver (serious) (Score:4, Informative)

          by WiseWeasel ( 92224 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @04:10AM (#9312691)
          In the US, it's illegal to BE passed on the right. It is your duty to be as far right as possible (within reason). Too bad no one follows this rule, and you have to ride people's asses or just pass them on the right. Flash your lights at someone, and you're liable to get shot...

          • Re:He seems a dangerous driver (serious) (Score:5, Funny)

            by tiled_rainbows ( 686195 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @05:46AM (#9312918) Homepage Journal
            It is your duty to be as far right as possible

            Ah, I knew there was something funny about your political system! Thanks for clearing that up. It all makes sense now.

        • Just this winter, my friend and I were driving very early in the morning, on a nearly empty highway in farily dense fog. He was in the fast lane, and came upon a car that was going significantly slower than he. Now, he had plenty of room to pass on the right, but he decided to flash his lights at this car, but realized too late that it was a Cop!

          We got pulled over, and the officer told us that it was actually illegal to flash your high-beams for any reason. You know why? It blinds the oncoming traffi

  • New Orleans to Seattle... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dnahelix ( 598670 ) <slashdotispieceofshit@shithome.com> on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:00AM (#9312175)
    I put a digital camera on my dash that took a picture every minute and have a movie of my drive from New Orleans to Seattle. It's awesome, but you only get about 1 frame per mile.

  • 65MB videos? (Score:4, Informative)

    by jb.hl.com ( 782137 ) <joe.joe-baldwin@net> on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:02AM (#9312187) Homepage Journal
    Come on, that's like actively saying "I want my site to be fucked in the ass by the Slashdot Effect".

    Why no freakin' BitTorrent? That seems obvious, especially if you're the one who submits your site full of absurdly large videos to /.

    (FYI, I'm getting 22k/s, on a link that usually gets about 25. Not too bad, now watch that server burn in about 5 minutes...)

    • Re:65MB videos? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:15AM (#9312255)
      Er, not necessarily the case. Check your
      trace up to dreamhost.com. They've got pipe.
      Also, check out the session management they've
      set up in Apache. They'll survive /. just fine.
      It's the idiots who run videos off a small
      pipe or dumb default-apache setup that have probs.

      • Re:65MB videos? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by JWSmythe ( 446288 )

        It's at dreamhost.com? Damn, I didn't even traceroute it. I know their equipment! Small world. Ya, they have plenty of bandwidth, and their servers are pretty good. It's probably maxing out the connectivity for that one machine (or cluster, I don't know their stuff that well).

        For anyone interested, they do have a really sweet setup. I've talked to their techs a few times, who gave me the tour.

  • More interesting route. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) * on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:02AM (#9312189)
    I'd like to see someone do this with a more interesting route (yes, I'm a Portlander). This would be cool for, say, Route 66 - and possibly at 1/50th (or a selection of several speeds/frame rates).

    Anyway, it's a pretty cool video and actually something I'd thought about years ago. Glad to see someone else had the same idea. :)
    • If you want to see the video at other speeds...stuff like VLC can change the speed a LITTLE on the fly...and any numbers of programs can let you tweak to heart's content.

    • Re:More interesting route. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      no doubt. driving the 5 to Oregon is about the most boring trip I can think of, nothing but trucks and more trucks for the most part... I'd prefer taking the 101 at least part of the way up just to break the monotony. the scenerey is better, at least.
      • Yeah. I've done that trip (Salem to LA & back) and it'd dead boring.

        However, I've taken 101 all the way from LA to Lincoln City, then over to Salem. Much more interesting. The stretch of Oregon coast between Florence and Newport is particularly gorgeous.

        I'd have to say I'd take I-5 over driving through S Dakota any day. Gawd. Nothing. Some Wall Drug signs for mild amusement, but that's it.

        Now if I were to do something like this and had to pick a highway... without a doubt, the AlCan. The Alask

    • Re:More interesting route. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Our Man In Redmond ( 63094 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @04:30AM (#9312750)
      Route 66 would be cool, but unfortunately large tracks of it (primarily between Arizona and Oklahoma, from what I remember) no longer exist.

      I remember a book that was funded by the WPA (I think -- I haven't seen the book in years) that documented the highways of Texas as they existed in the 1930s, including landmarks (drive 0.3 miles west and turn left at the red barn). Imagine if the technology had been in place to put frame-per-second camera on cars and document the highways of the time on film. In fact maybe we should do something like this now. Our cities and highways will probably look as quaint and antiquated to the people of 2074 as the highways of 1934 look to us.

  • makes the trip a mere 6 minutes long (Score:5, Funny)

    by skimitar ( 730902 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:02AM (#9312190)
    About as long as the life-expectancy of his server

  • Torrent link (Score:5, Informative)

    by redhat421 ( 620779 ) * on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:04AM (#9312198)
    You can find a torrent for the big video 2004Apr23_trip.torrent [smartaustin.com]

    • Re:Torrent link (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Bill_Royle ( 639563 )
      As a former Oregonian, I'll bite and seed it for a while too :) I will say though that only a masochist would pimp a file that big on Slashdot... of course, you knew that from the 50 other comments here!

      Way to go - fun experiment!

  • Greetings poster (Score:3, Funny)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:05AM (#9312206) Homepage Journal
    Slashdotting yourself and posting a 65Mb AVI? [bearcreeklock.com]

    You must be new around here.
    Or just really needing your ISPs love and attention ...which I'm sure you'll be getting by morning.

    Anyway, it was nice knowing you and all.

  • Sweet! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Piranhaa ( 672441 )
    I've always wondered how pissed the drivers that passed me were . . . Now I can know!

    • Re:Sweet! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )
      I've always wondered how pissed the drivers that passed me were . . . Now I can know!

      If he mounted the camera on the rear, we would probably see nothing but middle fingers :-)

  • Poor guy, server just fried (Score:3, Informative)

    by caryw ( 131578 ) <carywiedemann@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:13AM (#9312246) Homepage
    It was going good...

    0K (wget dots) 0% @ 372.78 KB/s
    50K (wget dots) 0% @ 279.33 KB/s
    100K (wget dots) 0% @ 271.74 KB/s
    150K (wget dots) 0% @ 2.87 MB/s
    200K (wget dots) 0% @ 1.95 MB/s

    and then it fried....

    34850K (wget dots) 50% @ 74.18 KB/s
    34900K (wget dots) 50% @ 78.25 KB/s
    34950K (wget dots) 51% @ 60.83 KB/s
    35000K (wget dots) 51% @ 56.56 KB/s
    35050K (wget dots) 51% @ 46.64 KB/s

    Slashdot effect in action people... I'll post a BitTorrent if it ever finishes

    Ugh, had to do a find replace of all the ..........'s wget makes. Damn lameness filter
    • It was going good...

      0K (wget dots) 0% @ 372.78 KB/s
      50K (wget dots) 0% @ 279.33 KB/s
      100K (wget dots) 0% @ 271.74 KB/s
      150K (wget dots) 0% @ 2.87 MB/s

      I think the obvious and important question here is who is your ISP, and who do I have to sleep with to get them to provide service in a non-top-50 market?

  • Despite speeding it up 95x... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Texas Rose on Lava L ( 712928 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:14AM (#9312252) Homepage Journal
    The 5 is still boring as hell.

    • Re:Despite speeding it up 95x... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You Yanks have all the fun. I loved the vid! The sun was shining, there were lots of cars, hills, and fun things to see. This was a really nice slice of life from another part of the world. I would love to see videos from Hong Kong traffic, or races around other parts of the GINORMOUS United States.

  • I thought the guy built a HYPERSONIC plane. (Score:3, Funny)

    by zymano ( 581466 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:15AM (#9312256)
    Now that would be cool.

  • 950 miles in 6 minutes (Score:4, Funny)

    by jlanthripp ( 244362 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:21AM (#9312284) Journal
    Sounds like how I drive...
  • Quoth the article:
    To create the video I had to capture the entire movie (25 gigs or so), extract it to single frames with VirtualDub, delete 99 out of 100 of them (left 10,000 frames), color correct and...

    What's the purpose of removing so many frames? Just to reduce size further, or when speeding up something like this does dropping frames make it appear smoother or something?
    • Video = 30fps you have to drop frames to speed it up.
    • The human eye can only detect so many frames per second, when he takes out that many, it just leaves out the stuff we wouldn't be able to see anyways

      The limit on what we can percieve is 60 frames per second or something in that arena, you do the math.

      • Re:Question about his methods (Score:4, Informative)

        by Osty ( 16825 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @03:03AM (#9312475)

        The limit on what we can percieve is 60 frames per second or something in that arena, you do the math.

        Incorrect. First off, the eye doesn't see in "frames per second". Second, 60 fps is well below the maximum frame rate our eyes can see (nobody has yet proven a maximum frame rate). For example, look at a CRT monitor at 60Hz and then one at 100Hz. I bet you can tell the difference (yes, Hz and fps are different, but they're similar enough for this discussion). If you can't, or won't admit that you can, you'll still know when you have crazy eye fatigue and neck muscle strain later. The same goes for flourescent lights at 60Hz.


        People make the mistake of saying that the eye can only see X frames per second (where X is 24, 30, 60, or what have you), when they mean to say, "It only takes X frames per second for the eye to discern motion," where X decreases as effects such as motion blur are added to the source media. 24 frames per second of a video game like Quake sucks horribly, but 24 frames per second for a movie is acceptable because the film camera picks up motion blur. That's also ignoring the fact that video games are measured in average frames per second (your 24fps Quake game is going to slow down horribly when you get multiple meshes and particles going). It's also horribly evident that 24fps is not nearly enough when you watch long horizontal or vertical pans in movies.


        Just because movies play at 24fps, or NTSC plays at 30fps (well, 29.xxx fps, and shown in half-frames for an effective 60Hz refresh rate), or PAL is at 25fps, or your LCD monitor happens to refresh at 60Hz doesn't mean that's all the eye can see. I'm also ignoring the more motion-receptive portions of your eye (peripheral vision), which you can play around with by looking at a CRT out of the corner of your eye. I bet you can even tell that a 100Hz CRT flickers by looking at it that way.

  • Ads? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Johnathon_Dough ( 719310 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:23AM (#9312295)
    Maybe this is all a big marketing ploy?

    1. Send thousands of people to download a huge .avi

    2. Make sure your ad for a "great web host" is in plain text at the top of the page.

    3. Listen to the collective gasp as your site actually manages to keep up with the downloads (as of 11:20pm pacific)

    4. Profit?

    Of course the whole thing goes out the window if the server actually does crap out in about 5-6 hours when the east coast get's to work and collectively hits the download link in one giant spasm of excitement at the chance of seeing the %$&%-ing highway 5.

    weee?

    • Whoops

      In the time it took to preview, correct some stupid spelling mistakes and then hit submit. My download crapped out, and now I can't connect again.

      Guess I should have left step three as ????

      That will teach me to proof read.

  • However, after the server exploded due to Slashdotting and started a huge fire resulting in the destruction of his house, the neighborhood, and most of LA, the total cost of the trip was estimated at 8.5 billion USD.

  • Thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BitHive ( 578094 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:29AM (#9312333) Homepage
    I enjoyed watching your video. Thank you for making it!

  • Sign of the times on The Coast (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:33AM (#9312350) Journal
    In about 30 of the frames I could have sworn I saw geeks on the side of the road with "Will Code for Food" signs.
  • Again - nice and easy to do with a Laptop and webcam, and about 12x normal speed - I'd post it on my site..... but this is slashdot after all.

    I'm not sure mach 9 is as watchable, it's certainly faster, but I kinda like the way I can pick out details at a simulated speed of 720mph

  • i've done this myself and I offer these tips (Score:5, Informative)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:37AM (#9312369)
    I did this with my Canon ZR80 and got some good results using Vegas 4. I offer these suggestions to anyone who wants to try this themselves:

    Do not move the camera. Use a tripod. If you cant rig up a full size tripod in the passenger seat check best buy or similar stores for tiny desktop tripods. They work well when seated on the dash as long as you have something to keep them in place (duct tape).

    Cut out moments in post when your vehicle is not moving. I forgot to do this once and my video came to a 3 second hault as I reached an intersection. Needless to say it distracted from the video greatly and was truly annoying. Just trim it out so that it looks like you ran the red light or something and the video will continue to flow. This tip also goes for bumps or swerves as they look terrible at high speed.

    Do not add a blur effect in post production, or atleast not the ones that come with Vegas. They seriously distract from the video. If you need that light-speed look I suggest duplicating the video layer, moving the top one forward 2 or 3 frames and changing its opacity to 50%. This will create a cool effect especially when passing cars and changing lanes

    If you are going to mount the camera inside the car (which I highly suggest) make sure:

    A. Your windshield is clean

    B. Its not raining. I did this once with the windshield wipers on and it looked horrible

    C. Your state and county stickers are not in the picture. If the camera does move it will be much more noticable if there is a static image on the video.

    If you are going to tape more than an hour of driving you may want to setup a laptop on an inverter hooked up to the camera with firewire set to take an image every X seconds. You can then drag all of these into your favoriate post video production software but in my experiences you dont get as smooth an image unless you overlap the images with opacity fades and by that time its become one helluva project

    Tip for vegas: You can increase the velocity encelope up to 300% but thats not a whole lot. Do this alone with shortening the clip while holding down the CTRL key will allow for up to 12x the speed without the need to reencode.

    If you need to speed up the video faster than what your post video production software can do you can always render the video no or low compression, import the now rendered video and do it again. lather, rinse, repeat.

    And always:

    Mix it to good techno if thats your cup of tea

    I'm interested in hearing what other tips video enthusiast slashdoters have come up with. Please share.

    As always I apologize for the bad spelling and horrible formatting, I'm rushing to get to sleep

    BTW: This also works well for filming Ballroom Dancing [usabda.org]. It looks hillarious and cool at the same time. Try overlaying multiple segments of the dance at different oppacities and adding a black and white or sepiatone filter and playing witht the white balance for a great ghostly look.

    • If you weren't maxed already I'd bump you +1.

      For fun I do time-lapse of relatively stationary stuff - like plants growing, where the speed-up really brings out patterns that you don't see at normal speed.

      Maybe that's why I actually liked the part in this video where he's parked at a gas station and you see some plants blowing in the wind, for a change of pace.

      Some issues are different when you're doing a time-lapse over 1 hour versus multiple days. But one thing that I've found useful for slow-changing

  • If only... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Lakers ( 109032 )
    As a fellow geek that does this exact drive about 4 times a year, I must say that 6 minutes is extremely appealing.

    Many times during the monotony of the drive up I-5 I've wished I could teleport (even only 20 miles at a time). Mach 9 sounds just as appealing.

  • Cross-Country video (Score:5, Informative)

    by JWSmythe ( 446288 ) <jwsmythe@nospam.jwsmythe.com> on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:42AM (#9312387) Homepage Journal
    For those that can't see the slashdotted site, our automatic mirrors have the page itself HERE [lmlinux.com]. The backup site (listed on the page) still has the video available.

    I did the same thing driving with only one sleep stop from Florida to California. It ended up being rather boring. Lots of night driving where you could only see tail lights and reflectors, and plenty of "Road Runner" desert country. :)

    I shortened the whole 2500 mile drive down to 5 minutes, which was too much for most people to watch.

    I did a web broadcast for most of the drive, losing my Internet connection while driving through most of the South West US. It picked back up in the few major cities that I passed through, and that's when I got all the voicemails on my phone saying "Hey, your feed broke!" :)

    Most of the drive was rather quick. I got pulled over twice in Texas, where the cops were entertained to see a laptop in the passenger seat and a camera on the dash. Either of them asked why it was there, they just gave me a warning, and I went on my way. I really had the urge to tell the cops "My car can do almost 200mph, I'm doing 80mph, I want to go lots faster, there's nothing out here and no traffic!", but I held back to avoid an escort out of Texas. :)

    I got stuck in traffic going through San Antonio, Texas, which looked wierd on the video. Scenery was flying by, suddenly you saw the same minivan I was stuck behind for several frames. You could also see every time I stopped for gas, which lasted for just a couple frames.

    I made a run from LA to Salem Oregon and back, about a year ago. The drive took from Friday evening to Sunday morning. Again, it would have been a boring video. Most of Northern California was during the night, and Oregon was all under fog first thing in the morning when we arrived. I was in a rush, so we didn't get the laptop and camera set up for this one.

  • California 7A88404, Thats me! (Score:5, Funny)

    by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:47AM (#9312408)
    California 7A88404, That was me!

    3:39 seconds in

    Is it just me or at the 5:00 point does it looks like he started speeding like a bat out of hell?
  • ...too bad you had to waste it on I-5. If you have the chance to do it again, try Route 1 and US 101. They're much more scenic!

  • Way cooler.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by superhoe ( 736800 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @02:48AM (#9312414) Homepage
    .. are those flicks where somebody put up a camera to follow the building of a house, and then speeded the result it up by 200x or similar. That really cool to see a house 'grow' :) If anyone remembers urls to these flicks, post 'em in, I can't remember anymore..

  • ROAD TRIP (Score:5, Funny)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @03:02AM (#9312470) Journal
    Ok, now if you slow it down, you can find out exactly where he lives! Turn at the white fence!

    First one there, MOBLOG IT!

    GO!
  • well kinda. 3 min 2 sec and some frames.
    Cool way to make the treck less boring even if it's after the fact.
  • Did anyone else feel sick watching the video?

    I don't normally get motion sickness at all any more, but that's what I felt when I watched this.
  • No one's said anything, but can that possibly be a correct price? Or does he mean he picked them up at a garage sale somewhere? Actually, even at a garage sale, I'd be more than a bit surprised.

  • Similar experience... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HorsePunchKid ( 306850 ) <sns@severinghaus.org> on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @03:37AM (#9312585) Homepage
    Not quite on that scale and not taken that seriously. I set up my Olympus E-10 on a tripod in my back seat and had it take a picture every five minutes during a straight 17.5 hour drive from Boston to Champaign, IL. It worked out pretty well [severinghaus.org], considering...

  • Just be sure to turn your camera off when... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @03:43AM (#9312602)
    Just be sure to turn your camera off when you drive past Barbra Striesand's House. [californiacoastline.org]

  • Can't sleep? (Score:3, Informative)

    by l0wland ( 463243 ) <l0wland.yahoo@com> on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @04:55AM (#9312821) Journal
    Couple of years ago there was a TV-program on the German TV, where a camera was mounted on a train. This train drove through different countries and sceneries.

    This programm was broadcasted at night, and was the best ever sleeping-drug I could imagine. Watching it after a busy day, it took only like 10 minutes before I fell in a deep sleep.

    BTW you don't need a car and a VCR to create movies like this. If you live next to water where boats go by, or a busy road, or construction-works, it's very easy to create a timelapse-movie with only a webcam and webcam-software. Just make a pic every second, and use a tool to stitch all those pics to 1 movie afterwards. I did this a lot with cloudy skies, and it much fun to watch afterwards.

    • Re:Can't sleep? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mikael ( 484 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @06:19AM (#9312998)
      BTW you don't need a car and a VCR to create movies like this. If you live next to water where boats go by, or a busy road, or construction-works, it's very easy to create a timelapse-movie with only a webcam and webcam-software. Just make a pic every second, and use a tool to stitch all those pics to 1 movie afterwards. I did this a lot with cloudy skies, and it much fun to watch afterwards.

      I'll back this one up. It's definitely worth trying. It's just amazing the things you can see. If you're looking in the direction of an airport, a time-lapse movie will make contrails appear like missile launches. You can actually see the shadows of cirrus clouds moving across cumulus clouds. The most amazing thing is seeing the different cloud layers travelling in different (if not totally opposite) directions. The best frame rate I've found is taking 1 frame ever 10 seconds, replaying at 30 frames seconds for clouds.

      You can actually make your own time lapse software using Microsoft's MFC Vidcap demo. Just add a delay loop for the desired number of seconds. The only restriction is that there's a 2.5 Gigabyte file limit (around 2200 640x480 frames).

  • Hook up a GPS too... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rediguana ( 104664 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @06:26AM (#9313017)
    What would be fun is to hook up a GPS as well, and overlay a moving map on the video as well. I must try this in New Zealand, as we have some awesome highways through the Southern Alps and lovely driving road... mmmmm...

  • Can't he keep right? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Cobblepop ( 738291 ) on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @06:31AM (#9313032)
    Well it's confirmed: In over nine hours, he kept to the right for approximately 3 minutes of the trip.

    Great geek; terrible driver: http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html

  • I personally think motion blur would have helped (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Thagg ( 9904 ) <thadbeier@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 02, 2004 @09:24AM (#9313831) Journal
    Averaging together 50 frames instead of just throwing away 99 in 100 would have made a much smoother video. While you still have all of the frames on line, it might be interesting to try. Even better (for video) would have been creating the final output on fields (60 fps)

    Still, not to look a gift horse in the mouth -- it was a pretty cool video. Thanks!

    thad

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