Recently I worked as the post-production manager on a Creative Brisbane Timelapse project headed by The Arc director Patrick Gatling. The project was designed to test and showcase the latest techniques and software surrounding timelapse photography and videography. The project featured some hyperlapse driving clips, RAW image and regular compressed JPG photography.

The hyperlapse and JPG clips worked flawlessly and handled very smoothly in all our editing and effects software. However, RAW timelapse workflow requires special care and attention to give the editing process room to breath.

We found that stabilisation, noise reduction and deflicker were the biggest time-killers when working in the format and render times slowed each machine down to a halt on a number of occasions.

The solution was developing a preset and transcode workflow which applied all the effects mentioned above, before we started any editing. Each clip was pre-loaded with its needed effects then transcoded to an intermediate proxy and master. The proxy enabled us to edit the clips effortlessly including applying small in-frame movements and avoiding any bumps in the lapses, This meant managing all our render time in one go and minimising mid-edit delays. After the edit was complete it was as simple as re-linking to the master file and transitioning over to Davinci Resolve for colour grading.

You can check out the timelapse video here: