How to Make Time-Lapse Video (with Pictures)

Time-lapse videos can easily grab the attention in the social newsfeed. Do you want to make time-lapse videos to show the passage of time? Do you want to create time-lapse video to watch the blooming flowers, drifting clouds, star trails against the night sky and other nature in its entirety? But, the question is how to create time-lapse videos?

In this tutorial, you’ll discover how to easily create a beautiful as well as high quality time-lapse video, and how to change video speed.

What Is Time-Lapse?

Time-Lapse Video Meaning

Capturing a lot of photos of a scene over some time, and assembling them to create a seamless sped-up video. In other words, film frames are captured is much more spread out than the frequency used to view the sequence.

Time-lapse is a perfect choice for you to reveal a movement that you’d barely notice with the naked eyes. In general, time-lapse video is the opposite of slow motion video.

Time-Lapse Video Subject

It is recommended to understand what makes a good time-lapse subject before learning how to make them.

Anything that changes slowly is perfect for time-lapse photography. If you don’t have ideas in mind, you can see the following ideas. If not, please directly go to the next part – how to make.

1. The sun rising or setting
2. The tide coming in at the beach
3. The moon and stars moving across the night sky
4. Movements of a busy city street
5. Rush-hour traffic
6. Children running around
7. Fruit rotting
8. Flower blossoming
9. Growth of plant
10. Ice melting
11. Clouds movement
12. Plant and fruit growing
13. Construction process
14. Drawing or other creative processes
15. Any beautiful natural landscape

Video Watch – a time-lapse video about nature

It seems too difficult to create time-lapse videos. Luckily, in this article, we’ll show you how to create time-lapse videos in PC and mobile devices easily.

How to Make Time-Lapse Videos from Video Files

How to Make Time-Lapse Videos with MiniTool MovieMaker

Many video editors can create a time-lapse video by converting a standard video. If you are looking for a free time-lapse video editor, there is no better option than MiniTool MovieMaker.

This free, no ads, watermark-free video editor offers clean and intuitive interfaces, as well as simple operation to help you. Besides, this free video editor has many other useful features for video editing, including video transitions, video filters, color correction, animated text, etc.

Now, you can try the following steps to convert a standard video into time-lapse video.

Step 1. Download and install MiniTool MovieMaker on PC.

Download free MiniTool MovieMaker, install it on Windows by following the installation instructions. After that, launch this free time-lapse video editor to get its main interface as follows.

MiniTool MovieMakerClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 2. Upload video file.

Click the Import Media Files button to import the video file, then drag and drop it to the timeline.

Step 3. Create time-lapse video.

Select the video file in the timeline, and click the Speed icon. Then, tap Fast, and choose an option like 2X to make time-lapse video by converting a standard video.

If you want to choose a certain section to time-lapse, you can trim video to shorten the length of your video, or split it to remove some unnecessary parts.

Step 4. Add music to video.

Some people always say that music is the soul of video. It sounds like a bit of an exaggeration. However, a successful video, especially time-lapse video, always has an appropriate soundtrack.

In the Media Library window, click Import Media Files to add some music files. If you don’t have a suitable one at hand, you can use the free music files offered by this free time-lapse video editor. Next, drag and drop the desired music file onto the timeline. After that, you can edit the audio file, including split file, merge file, trim file, fade in or fade out music file, etc.

Step 5. Save the time-lapse video.

Congratulations! Now, you can take the last step: save your video.

Click the Export button, select the video format you like, give a name, and select a path to store the video. In the exporting window, you not only can change video format but also can click the Settings button to change video bitrate, video quality, etc. A few moments later, you can enjoy your time-lapse video.

It is very easy to make a time-lapse video, isn’t it? Shoot a video, open time-lapse video editor, and speed up the original video.

Here, MiniTool MovieMaker helps you easily change video speed including speed up video and slow down video. Of course, this free video speed changer has many other useful features to help you create outstanding videos. For example, you can do the following things with this free time-lapse video editor.

• Reverse video to make video play backward.
• Apply video transitions to combine multiple videos into one.
• Split or trim video to remove some unwanted parts.
• Apply video filters as well as motion effects to video.
• Add animated titles, subtitles, and end credits to video to complete your story.
• Change video format, even extract audio from video, etc.

Related article: Extract audio from MP4

With MiniTool MovieMaker, I created time-lapse video by converting a standard video without any difficulty. Share this free video editor with all of you. Click to Tweet

How to Make Time-Lapse Video Online

If you don’t want to install any time-lapse video editor, you also can speed up your video to make a time-lapse as long as you turn to a free online tool such as Kapwing, Animoto, etc.

Here, we’ll show how to make a time-lapse video online via Kapwing.

Step 1: Open the online speed change tool, Kapwing, and upload the video file from your PC. You also can import a video from YouTube, or Vimeo.

Step 2: To make time-lapse video online, click a speed, like 4x, to increase the speed of your video. The Kapwing editor will show the expected length of the output video once you click on a speed.

Step 3: Click Create button after choosing a speed option. After the video is finished, you can share the Kapwing URL with your friends, or download the MP4 file and share it with friends.

How to Shoot Time-Lapse Videos

How to Make Time-Lapse Videos in Phone

Most smartphone cameras have built-in time-lapse feature. To create time-lapse videos, you can open your phone camera, and select the Time Lapse feature to shoot a video.

When shooting a time-lapse video, please place your phone in a secure spot where it won’t move around a lot. After that, click the record button to start shooting a video. Tap the record button when you are done. Finally, save video in your Camera Roll, thus you can easily upload it to social media to share.

Tips: To make your time-lapse video is wide instead of tall, you need to turn your phone when you’re making a landscape video.

How to Make Time-Lapse Videos with GoPro or Other Action Cameras

If you are planning to combine some interval shooting to create a movie that spans many minutes, hours, or even days, you can try time-lapse cameras to shoot videos. Here, we take GoPro for example.

To shoot time-lapse videos via GoPro, it is recommended to prepare a tripod attachment for the GoPro.

If you don’t want to buy a tripod, you need to move around to shoot time-lapse video.

Mount the camera on the tripod, turn the camera on, go to the menu and find the Time Lapse Video option. Next, record the video. After stop recording, you can watch it, and import it to computer to edit it.

To edit time-lapse videos, you can try a free, simple and effective video editor. If you don’t have any ideas, try MiniTool MovieMaker. With this free, no ads, no bundle video editing software, you can add text to video, split video, merge video, trim video, reverse video, etc. Most importantly, it is a watermark-free video editor. Download this free video editor, and have a try.

MiniTool MovieMakerClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

You can shoot time-lapse videos with phone or time-lapse cameras. Click to Tweet

Bottom Line

Have you created time-lapse videos? To shoot time-lapse video, you can try time-lapse video cameras or mobile phones. If you want to create time-lapse video by converting a standard video, you can try MiniTool MovieMaker. This free time-lapse video editor lets you easily change video speed, and offers many useful features to edit video.

Should you have any questions on how to use MiniTool MovieMaker, please feel free to contact us!

Time-Lapse Video FAQ