Best Time Free Time lapse software I've used

I have a lot of good things to say about the GoPro Hero 3, but I’ll save them for the full review. What I want to point out here is that the free Cineform Studio app on Gopro’s site is an excellent, easy, full functioning, time lapse application.

GoPro Cineform Studio import

Simply click the “Import New Files” button on the left, select your group of images and click ok. Once the files are done importing they show up as a single item on the left with the image size, number of frames, an estimated play back time.

GoPro Cineform Studio advanced

Click on the “advanced settings” and choose your final output settings. In this case I went with a frame size of 4000 by 3000 which gives you plenty of room to pan, scale, and frame the final video into a 1080p timeline. At that resolution you can actually scale the footage down by about 50% and still fill a 1080p window, which means any of that noise grain visible in low light shots really starts to disappear.

Once you’ve picked the settings and rendered your file, just drop the file into a timeline and scale and crop until the framing is about right, then render out. In this case I was lazy and didn’t make any edits to the half dozen photos that had white balance issues since this was mostly a test of the workflow. However it’s a good idea to look over your images before you import them into the Cineform Studio app.

Even though Cineform Studio is designed to work with the files from the GoPro hero 3, it was also pretty easy to import 5184 by 3456 jpg files from an old Canon 7d time lapse I worked on and go through the same workflow. It’s a very quick way to turn your time lapse shots into a simple .avi or .mov file that can easily be imported into your NLE. If you’re new to time lapse or just don’t need all of the advanced settings, the Cineform Studio app is worth checking out.

UPDATE: Gopro has changed the name of the Cineform studio to “Gopro Studio edit“. The software works exactly the same as Cineform studio and is still free, if you have any problems with the links on this page, simply visit Gopro’s site and you’ll find the software in the download section.

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