aeonview

v.0.7 (2010-08-04)

Description

aeonview is a collection of few php functions to automate image capturing and then patching those images together using convert and mpgtx to create some supercool timelapse videos.

Basic idea is to grab image from a static url to own folder renaming it by capture hour and minute, then when day changes, convert the images to one video — after month, convert the individual days videos to one month's coverage of events. etc.

Download

Latest copy from our Subversion repository as .tar.gz Browse the repository

Defaults

The default directory and filename structure can potentially archive everything for few thousand years. Paths are relative to the aeonview.php-file, but can be targeted to anywhere.

• img/2009-01/ — year-month folder
• img/2009-01/31/ — folder for all images of the day
• img/2009-01/31/23-55.jpg — images in hour-minute format

Videos are being archived like this:

• mov/2009.mpg — full year
• mov/2009-12.mpg — full month
• mov/2009-12/31.mpg — full day

Tar-archives are being saved (if set) to the following folders:

• arc/2009-12/31.tgz — day
• arc/2009-12.tgz — full month

The cronjobs default configuration is:

# Get image every 10 minutes
0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/bin/php5 /var/www/aeonview.php?f=c

# Generate the yesterdays video daily
@daily   /usr/bin/php5 /var/www/aeonview.php?f=mov-day   > /dev/null 2>&1

# Generate months video monthly
@monthly /usr/bin/php5 /var/www/aeonview.php?f=mov-month > /dev/null 2>&1

# Generate full years video
@yearly  /usr/bin/php5 /var/www/aeonview.php?f=mov-year  > /dev/null 2>&1

# Archive images (remember to put this after video making, not before)
@daily   /usr/bin/php5 /var/www/aeonview.php?f=archive-day   > /dev/null 2>&1
@monthly /usr/bin/php5 /var/www/aeonview.php?f=archive-month > /dev/null 2>&1
@yearly  /usr/bin/php5 /var/www/aeonview.php?f=archive-year  > /dev/null 2>&1

additional tar-operations are being used to control the disk usage.

Example

The youtube-video is a 2min example of a photos I've taken from a webcam (352×288px) at the center of Tampere, Finland.

The image was captured every 5 minutes, giving me 140 images per day. The 2 minutes in the example contains 10 days worth of images.

You should be aware that with those configurations, assuming file size stays at 14kt, one day takes up 1.9mb. Month would take then 57mb.

Requirements

• PHP5 (cli-version is ok), Safe-mode OFF
• cron or similar to run it automagically
• ImageMagick's convert to create movie from images
• MPEG.org » mpeg2encode
• mpgtx to join the movies together
• Some disk space to save to files to and a steady internet connection

Development

This script is started and maintained by Mr. Vuorinen (darkmind), you can contact him by sending email.

Development feed

Rev 7 - viir (1 file(s) modified)
curl creates dirs
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Rev 6 - viir (1 file(s) modified)
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Rev 5 - viir (1 file(s) modified)
now should show up the correct revision number as part ...
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