Time-lapse movie composer for Windows

To start using Time-lapse movie composer you need to download demo or order a full version of the Time-lapse movie composer and install it.

Run Time-lapse movie composer and select folder with you images. It is not necessary to remove any other files that can be in the same folder. Program will scan the specified folder and will select only acceptable images. Images can be in JPEG, PNG, BMP or TIFF formats.

If your folder contains some other images you can delete them on this step of the wizard. You can also add more images from other locations to the list. Make sure you have registered all the images to make movie from and press Next button.

At this step you need to specify an output movie name. By default program suggests to create movie in the same folder that you have specified on the first step. You can specify another name or rename the produced movie later.
Time-lapse movie composer reads list of compressors that can be used to produce a movie. You can select one of them from the list. You can setup compressor parameter on this step if the selected compressor supports this functionality. Not every compressor in your system able to be used for movie encoding. Wizard will check the selected compressor for compatibility and will ask you to select another one if the selected is not compatible.
You can change a size of the movie on this step. This depends only on your requirements. You should not think about aspect ratio and clipping at this step. Just select the desired resolution and move forward.
The speed of the produced movie can be changed by Frames per second field. Try different settings to select the proper one. We suggest using 30 frames per second for move view but you can change this. You can produce the movie and return to this step to try another setting.

You may have problems with shakes of the camera or a subject during your time-lapse sessions. A camera or optic stabilizer may not save from this. Manufactures are generally recommends to disable stabilizers for a tripod session. For a long exposure shoots you may have batter results with disabled image stabilization technologies.
Time-lapse movie composer attempts to detect camera shakes. This process is not fast. You can stop shakes detection procedure and check this by yourself or even skip this step. You can return to this later if you'll find noticeable shakes in final movie.

If you do not want to compensate camera shakes you should skip this step.
In other case you should select a suspected frame from a timeline. If you have used a built in shakes detection procedure you will have some suspected frames on the timeline below the image. You can drag the image via center of a blue circle to place it properly based on previous image content. The previous image will be displayed semitransparent to help you align frames. The distance of the movement is not displayed pixel based. It's more precise and based on real frames size. Use arrows of the blue circle to fine tune the placement of the frame.
All the following frames will be aligned as the current one.
Check all the suspected frames and correct them if needed.
You may see blue background while aligning a frame. This is just for your information and can be fixed on the next step.

Your movie aspect rate may be different then you source image aspect rate. You have to select an area of the image to be included in the movie. Try to avoid blue background that can appears if you've aligned some frames. We display it in blue only for tuning. The background will be black in produced movie.
Click and hold on a start point and move cursor to another corner of the rectangle that you want to include in movie. You can fine tune the selection by dragging every corner of the selection tool. You can drag an entire selection as well.

Lightning compensation.
Sometime you may have slightly different luminance in your images. This is very common for a long exposure but can happened in other cases. It may not be so noticeable on images but pops out on a movie. You can try to compensate this. If you are not sure or just want to try without the compensation just skip this part. In case you want to compensate luminance difference you should select Reduce difference in lighting option. You may select the area to sample luminance from or use whole image to detect luminance differences. Selected area works faster and can provide better results.
It is not recommended to use too dark ant too light pixels for this procedure. You can change the default threshold via Low and High sliders.
Tint compensation
For a long time session you may need to compensate tint. It is possible to compensate small tint changes. Click Reduce tint difference to select an area to sample colors from.

Skip this step if you do not want to use lighting compensation or you want to use whole images to measure lighting.
In other case select an area to sample lighting from. Try to select a static area. You can display a timeline by click arrow button on the bottom of a preview image to check the area on other images.
Too dark pixels will be marked by maroon. Too light pixels will be marked al blue. They will be excluded from overall lighting calculation.

Skip this step if you do not want to use tint compensation.
In other case select an area to sample colors from. The overall color will be calculated and displayed on a preview image. This color rectangle will not be present in the movie. Select a frame with perfect tint. To select a frame you can display a timeline by click arrow button on the bottom of a preview image.

The final step of the wizard is a movie encoding progress. You may see some other windows that the selected compressor may display. The progress and estimated time will be displayed while encoding the movie.
We are recommending you not to close a wizard after a first attempt of movie creation. Check the results first. You can return to a previous step by blue Back button on the top of the screen.
You can stop the creation and quit program. Click cancel button to do so.