Timelapse

This repository contains the source code for and releases of Timelapse. Timelapse is created and maintained by Saul Greenberg of the University of Calgary and Greenberg Consulting Inc.

Timelapse is an image analyser for camera traps. It is primarily used by scientists to visually analyze images and encode data as tags from thousands to millions of images and videos. While it is agnostic to its use, ecologists are currently the primary users. See the Timelapse web site for packaged downloads, a tutorial guide and manual oriented towards end-users, and other resources.

Timelapse is currently in use across the world by various biologists / ecologists / scientists and resource managers within broadly varying institutions --- national and regional parks, ecological agencies, fishery departments, conservation societies, university groups, etc. --- for quite different needs (e.g., wildlife monitoring, fisheries usage, resource monitoring and management, social science studies etc). What they have in common is

• they collect extremely large numbers of images from one to very many field cameras
• they are interested in examining and tagging images (i.e., information describing image details)
• they want to create data fields specific to their projects (i.e., highly customizable data)
• they have their own needs and ways for performing analytics on that data. Timelapse is optimized for those wanting to turn their images into meaningful data. Users can easily export the data for later analysis in another package of their choosing (e.g., R, spreadsheets, etc.)

Timelapse works with image recognition data, where it integrates access to EcoAssist / Megadetector. Timelapse imports the recognition file produced by that software (or other compatible image recognition tool), and displays detected items within bounding boxes. Queries can be run against recognized entities.

Contributing

Bug reports, feature requests, and feedback are most welcome. Let us know! We can't improve the system if we don't hear from you. If you wish to co-develop this project, see below.

History

Timelapse was originally designed for a fisheries biologist who ran many camera traps in Timelapse mode, hence its name. Over time, its interface and functionality has been extended to meet the needs of a broad variety of user who use camera traps in many different ways.

While a few developers have contributed to Timelapse over the years, the overwhelming majority was done as a solo effort by Saul Greenberg. This repository begins at Timelapse Version 2.3.2.5Alpha2. Earlier Timelapse versions can be supplied if needed by contacting Saul Greenberg

For Developers

If you wish to co-develop this project, contact [email protected] to see if our project goals coincide.

Development environment

My build was created using Visual Studio 2022: (https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/), with

• Common Tools -> GitHub Extension for Visual Studio

Clone the repository locally using Visual Studio's Team Explorer, or by using a GIT interface such as SourceTree, or through GitHub's clone or download options

Development is against the .NET 4.8.1 Framework.

Building Timelapse

To successfully build Timelapse, do the following.

1. Copy the ffmpeg.exe and exiftool.exe files from Dependencies-Exes folder into the Timelapse folder.
2. Using Visual Studio, open Timelapse.sln located in the top level folder.
3. Build and try to run the projecfts: ** Timelapse ** TimelapseTemplateEditor
4. If you get an error message that says some required files are missing...For some reason the the SQLite package doesn't always install completely. The SQLite builds (in bin/Debug or bin/Release) should have created both x86 and x64 folders containing an SQLite.interoper.dll. If those aren't there, re-install these SQLite packages using the Nuget package manager: ** System.Data.SQLite.Core ** Stub.System.Data.SQLite.Core.NetFramework
5. Other prebuilt dlls are already included in the Dependencies-dlls folder, and should be correctly referenced.
6. If something goes wrong, just contact me.

###Also helpful are

• Atlassian's SourceTree, a recommended augmentation of the git support available in Visual Studio's Team Explorer.
• Nuget Package Manager for accessing and including 3rd party packages used by Timelapse.

Dependencies

• Timelapse software requires .NET 4.8.1 framework. Although it is normally present in most Windows installations, end users can install .NET 4.8.1 (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb822049.aspx).
• Timelapse is currently tested on Windows 11 and - as far as we know - should run without issue on all versions of Windows.
• Timelapse uses various Nuget packages to automatically retrieve required dlls.
• This Timelapse repository also includes two required executables: ExifTool and ffmpeg (see step 1 above).
• The License file lists these required 3rd party packages and executables, which have their own particular license terms.
• Screen size of 1600 x 900 or larger is preferred, although it is usable on smaller displays.