Time Lapse Calculator

Turn an hour of clouds into a 24-second clip

An hour contains 3,600 seconds. Taking one photo every five seconds gives 720 photos. If each photo occupies one frame of a 30 fps video, those 720 frames play for 24 seconds.

The frame rate belongs to the finished video. It does not mean the camera takes 30 photos every second. At a five-second capture interval, the camera takes only 12 photos per minute.

Nikon’s time lapse guidance describes the same relationship: divide shooting time by interval to get frame count, then divide frames by playback frame rate.

Start with the clip you need

Suppose you have two hours to shoot and want a 30-second video at 24 fps. You need 30 × 24 = 720 frames. Spread that frame budget across 7,200 seconds: the interval is 10 seconds.

Choose Capture interval to solve that plan. If your camera does not offer the calculated interval, select an available setting and switch to Video length to see the resulting clip. Do not assume a rounded camera setting will produce the same length.

To work backward from a five-second interval and a 30-second target at 30 fps, choose Shoot duration. The target needs 900 frames, giving a shoot budget of 900 × 5 = 4,500 seconds, or 75 minutes.

Frames are indivisible. A 10.01-second target at 24 fps requires 240.24 frames, so this calculator uses 241. The actual clip becomes 241 ÷ 24 = 10.041667 seconds when displayed to six decimal places. Enter your editor’s exact playback rate; 29.97 and 30 fps give different durations.

Why a camera may count one more frame

This calculator uses an interval budget: it counts complete intervals and does not add an endpoint photo. A 60-second budget with a ten-second interval gives six frames. Those six frame starts, if the first is at zero, span 0 through 50 seconds. A camera that also captures at exactly 60 seconds could record seven.

That is why the outputs show both shoot duration and first-to-last frame span. Check your timer’s start and stop behavior when an exact frame count matters. Fractions of an interval are discarded in Video length mode. A plan shorter than one complete interval returns an error.

Also check what “interval” means on your camera. Here it means start of one shot to start of the next. Some timers instead specify the gap after an exposure ends; add exposure time to that gap before using this calculator. Nikon explains this distinction. Exposure, writing files and processing must fit the intended cadence.

Plan photo storage separately from video storage

In Advanced mode, enter the size of a representative test photo. For the 720-frame example, 5 MB per photo requires 3.6 GB. If RAW and JPEG are both saved, include both files in the per-photo size. Nikon’s preparation guide recommends a test shot to estimate file size.

The encoded video is a separate estimate. At an average output bitrate of 20 Mbps, the 24-second clip needs 24 × 20 ÷ 8 = 60 MB. This uses playback length, not the hour spent shooting. Decimal units are used: 1 GB = 1,000 MB and eight bits make one byte. Allow additional capacity for overhead, copies and free space; file size varies with image content and encoding settings.

Using GoPro, Brinno, iPhone or a moving camera

Use the actual interval and output fps from your camera or editing workflow. For a GoPro example, the HERO10 Black manual, pages 142–143, lists a five-minute capture at 0.5-second intervals producing a 20-second clip. That is 600 frames at 30 fps. Available settings depend on the model and mode, so the examples here are not camera presets.

The same fixed-interval arithmetic applies to a Brinno capture or a hyperlapse assembled from regularly timed photos. It does not estimate camera motion, stabilization, battery life or variable automatic speed. Apple’s iPhone guide describes recording time lapse footage, but this planner needs a known interval and playback rate to predict length. It does not infer them from an automatic recording.