Don’t you love it when a project that’s been bouncing around your head for a long time finally comes to fruition? For a few months now, I’ve wanted to create a time-lapse video of the process I use for creating kaleidoscope art on my computer. The thing was, I wasn’t really sure how to go about it. After learning about Screenr, a free online service for recording screencasts on your PC or Mac, I got really excited. I had the tool, now I just needed the time (all you parents out their nodding your heads in agreement – can I get a “hell yeah!!!” ?)
Well, the art gods were kind to me yesterday, because my little munchkin took a three hour nap. This turned out to be doubly fortunate, because making the video was a rather slow process. The free version of Screenr only allows for five minutes of recording at a time (you can upgrade to a paid version for $20/month), so I had to work in five minute increments, uploading my video when the five minutes was up and then recording a new file.
I was also worried about how well my five year old Mac would handle a ton of large video files, so I had to limit how much I recorded. I can spend several hours on my more intricate kaleidoscope art, but I didn’t want hours of footage clogging up my desktop. This meant I had to make my image a little less complex than I normally would. After I completed my drawing in 6 five minute segments, I imported the files into imovie and increased the playback speed to 800x the original speed. Half hour hour of video footage down to just under four minutes!
For my first attempt at something like this, I’m pretty happy with the result. It was definitely a learning experience, and something I want to do again in the near future.
