How to Use Time Lapse Video Recording Software on Linux Webcam

Okay, so I’ve been wanting to mess around with time-lapse videos for a while now. You know, those cool videos where you see clouds whizzing by or a flower blooming in seconds? Yeah, that stuff. I had an old webcam lying around and figured, why not give it a shot?

First, I dug out that dusty old webcam from the back of my closet. It’s one of those standard USB deals, nothing fancy. Then I grabbed an old laptop that wasn’t being used for much of anything anymore and plugged the camera in. I had to choose a good place to take the video, and finally I decided to record the street view outside my room.

Now came the tricky part – figuring out the software situation. I’m running Linux on this laptop, and I needed something that could take a picture every few seconds, and then stitch them together into a video. Seemed simple enough, right? But I have to find some kind of software to do this.

After messing around and breaking things a few times, I came across a tool called Webcam Surveyor. Then I did some digging and found that there was a way to use this software to record time-lapse video. I just need to set it up so that it can take a picture at intervals and save it to a video. It’s pretty easy to use.

I messed around with the settings in Webcam Surveyor, set the interval, and then set the location for the output video. After that I started taking pictures and recording. I went to sleep and waited for the next day, excited for the results. And you know what? It actually worked! I had a pretty neat time-lapse video of my street.

So, yeah, that’s my little adventure into the world of time-lapse videos. It’s definitely something I want to play around with more. Maybe next time I’ll try capturing something a bit more interesting than my boring old street.