Speeding up mp4 to look like a time lapse

[indijay]

Need help speeding up mp4 file.

I took a time-lapse for my son's extra credit but the video that the application produced is a regular video and not exactly a time-lapse. I wonder if there is any way to speed up the mp4 file.

I am playing around VirtualDub 2 by setting a frame rate to 300. Its going to take 2 hours to complete (and the video is rotated).

Is there any other way to achieve the same result quickly?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: VirtualDub failed as I ran out of space on my HDD. Where does it save the temp files? Thanks

[lingyi]

https://www.videohelp.com/search?q=time+lapse

[jagabo]

I am playing around VirtualDub 2 by setting a frame rate to 300. Its going to take 2 hours to complete (and the video is rotated).

You probably did that wrong. In VirtualDub(2) you want to set the source bitrate to a high value, then convert to a lower bitrate. VirtualDub will discard frames to produce the output frame rate. If your source is a 30 fps video and you want an output video at the same frame rate but runs 5 times faster, set the output frame rate to 30 and the source frame rate to 5 times that, 150 fps.

I suspect you just entered 300 as the output frame rate. That will simply duplicate each frame enough times to make up the difference between the source and the output. If the source is 30 fps and converted to 300 fps, each frame of the source will be repeated 10 times. You will probably have trouble playing the resulting file because most computers will not be able to play a 300 fps video (unless the frames are very small). But even if you can play the video at 300 fps, it will look no different than the source.

Is there any other way to achieve the same result quickly?

If you did it the way I specified it will go much faster because you will have many fewer frames rather than many more frames.

VirtualDub failed as I ran out of space on my HDD.

Did you specify a compression codec? If you don't the video is saved uncompressed, creating very large files.

Where does it save the temp files?

What temp files? You're just going to have to start over.