Flix Time Lapse of a Network Upgrade
JoshuaC
switches to the latest hardware. In our main server room we have 2
6500s, supporting about 250 connections, including 80+ servers.
I used flix with my Asus G51 laptop webcam, which is a 2MP camera, but
it left it at the Flix Default 640x480.
The recording ran for about 16 hours, so I went back and cut out all
of the images from when we weren't in the room. There was a third
switch to upgrade in another building, as well as lunch breaks where
the room was empty.
I set Flix to record at a 1.5s interval, and the final output was
about 35,000 images. Nearly 10k were deleted due to the times the
room was empty. I used a program called Fileboss to rename the files
sequentially.
I tried nearly every output that Flix could produce, but I couldn't
get any of them to work with Windows Movie Maker, to add the audio. I
even tried two popular programs to help me narrow down what codec
windows thought the video was, and neither of them could tell me
anything. The funny part is that Windows Media Player on Win7 could
play the movie, just not WMM. Anyhow, resorting to my roots, I dumped
the video onto a USB drive and imported it on my Mac in iMovie and
added the Benny Hill theme and exported it back out as an Mpeg4.
I think I set the Gap in Flix to 6 or 8 and the framerate at 24fps for
the creation of the video to help shorten the length of the playback.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYch3Hzd2oY
The stills came out quite nicely considering the horrible lighting in
the room, and the amount of exposure that a web camera needs in that
kind of lighting. There was a lot of motion blur, but it was limited
by the camera itself.
Enjoy!