Easy Time-lapse Videos Using FFmpeg

The Magic

This is probably one of the more helpful tricks I've shown off so far.

Here is a command using FFmpeg that will, get this, remove all frozen frames from a video, leaving only the frames showing work being done.

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vf mpdecimate,setpts=N/FRAME_RATE/TB -an out.mp4

Let this run for a while and BOOM, you get a clean recording devoid of downtime.

This has one catch, mpdecimate, the filter removing the frozen frames, only operates on the frames of a video, not the audio.

I use the -an option to remove the audio, if not, it would be desynced and make no sense.

This has saved me HOURS of editing when working on my wife's recording of her doing graphic design work.

I hope it helps y'all too.

The Plug

If this trick helped y'all, I would appreciate it if you would share the YouTube video and go sub to my channel, I'm working on growing my channel and any help would be amazing.


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