Timelapse Hydro

This repository is set up to provide an R-based process to take timelapse photos from any given site, sync with flow or temperature data, and overlay plots in the photos before stitching together into a mp4/avi.

This is a process that can take some time; running in parallel may speed initial processing of photos.

Coded by:

• Ryan Peek, Eric Holmes, Nick Santos

(Center for Watershed Sciences, UC Davis)

The Script Process

There are several components, but the main requirements are imagemagick and ffmpeg. Future iterations will require exifinfo

Main Steps:

1. Create folders and copy the timelapse photos to the photos folder.
2. Get a list of the photos in the folder and use imagemagick to pull photo info (datetime, baro, exposure).
3. Get logger/temperature data for creation of overlay and subset to photos (can subset using specific date window as well).
4. Make thermohydrograph plots or hydrograph plots for each photo, synced to photo timestamp.
5. Use -composite call to imagemagick to get timelapse photo and overlay plots
6. If you have ffmpeg, you can create quick timelapse. If not, many options like VirtualDub, Moviemakier, iMovie, etc.
   

Examples

Here are some example stills of the two different plots and a composite photo.

• A Hydrograph Plot

• A Thermohydrograph Plot

• And a composite example

Video

• Some examples below can be found on the CWS Vimeo website. The following example is from the NF American in 2016.

North Fork American October-December 2016 from Center for Watershed Sciences on Vimeo.

Additional Examples

For additional examples, using code developed by Nick Santos (using python and perl):

Cosumnes River Streamlapse 2015 from Center for Watershed Sciences on Vimeo.

A Streamlapse video of the Cosumnes River for the early 2015 floods

Time Lapse Hydrography for North Fork American and South Fork Yuba Rivers in California from Center for Watershed Sciences on Vimeo.

The Center for Watershed Sciences has a set of study sites on rivers throughout the northern Sierra Nevada range in California. Part of this research includes monitoring the river's edge habitat with remote game cameras. After a year's worth of captures, we realized we could do some other processing with these videos. This video shows images and hydrographs from two nearby rivers capturing the same moment in time.

About the images:
The images in this video are taken by a pair of identical game cameras that take an hourly picture, on the hour, 24 hours a day. The left images are from the North Fork American River in the 1000-2000 foot elevation band. The images on the right are from the South Fork Yuba River, about 20 miles north of the first camera in the Sierra Nevada.