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About this tool
Work out timelapse shooting interval, frame count, finished clip length and the card space a sequence will need.
This calculator links the three numbers that define a timelapse — shooting interval, frame count and finished clip length — so fixing any two gives you the third. It uses the exact relationships frames = shooting time ÷ interval, clip length = frames ÷ playback frame rate, and time compression = interval × playback frame rate, which is why a 2 second interval at 24 fps always compresses time by 48× whatever the shoot length. It also sizes the card space the sequence needs and warns when an interval is too short for the exposure plus file write.
Open Timelapse Interval Calculator on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter the values you already know.
Fine-tune the options to match your scenario.
Read the result and use it in your planning or reporting.
Start from an interval, or start from the clip length you have been asked to deliver.
Shows total gigabytes, how many frames the card holds and how long that lasts on location.
Flags intervals shorter than the exposure plus write time, before the intervalometer skips frames.
It depends entirely on how fast the subject moves: about 1 second for people and traffic, 2 seconds for fast clouds, 4 to 5 seconds for a sunset or slow shadows, 20 to 30 seconds for stars, and several minutes for construction or plant growth. Shorter intervals give smoother motion but far more frames and far more card space.
Multiply the clip length by your frame rate to get the frame count, then multiply by the interval. Ten seconds at 24 fps needs 240 frames, so at a 5 second interval you shoot for 1,200 seconds — 20 minutes. At a 2 second interval the same clip only takes 8 minutes.
Exactly the playback frame rate: 24 photos per second on a 24 fps timeline, 25 at 25 fps, 30 at 30 fps. This is why timelapse eats storage — one minute of 24 fps footage is 1,440 individual stills, which at 25 MB a RAW file is 36 GB.
No. The camera needs the full exposure to finish plus roughly a second to write the file before the next cycle, so a 25 second star exposure needs an interval of about 26 seconds or more. Set it shorter and the intervalometer silently skips cycles, leaving gaps that show as jumps in the finished sequence.
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