FreeNo adsNo malware
FlashLapse turns a memory card full of photos into a smooth timelapse video. Fix flicker, camera shake and dark nights in a live preview, then render once.
Works offline. Everything runs on your computer, ffmpeg included.
Pick the DCIM folder from your camera. FlashLapse finds every photo across 100MEDIA, 101MEDIA and the rest, sorts them in capture order and plays them as a film straight away. Every setting you change shows up in that preview.
Night or day look, your choice. FlashLapse remembers it, along with your folder, settings and window size.
Real cameras flicker, sway and keep shooting through the night. FlashLapse corrects all of it, and every correction is visible in the live preview the moment you switch it on. Try them here.
Auto-exposure gives every shot a slightly different brightness, so the finished video pumps. Deflicker measures each frame and pulls it toward a smoothed average of its neighbours.
Frame-to-frame jumps disappear. Slow, real changes like a sunset or passing weather stay. A bigger window smooths harder.
--deflicker --deflicker-window 15
Deflicker off · frame 1Masts sway in the wind, balconies settle over months, tripods get bumped. FlashLapse measures how far each frame moved and puts it back in place.
All frames get the same slight zoom, just enough to hide the correction, so no black borders appear. Max shift caps how far it may go.
--stabilize --stabilize-mode lock|smooth|anchor
Stabilize offThe raw footage: wind shake plus a slow drift as the mount settles.
A camera left outside for weeks records every night too. Skip dark frames drops photos whose average brightness is below a threshold. No GPS or timestamps needed: if it's black, it's out.
Analyze shows how bright your photos are. Night and day form two separate humps, and any threshold between them works. The preview hides dark frames live as you drag.
--skip-dark --dark-threshold 30Hiding 1,064 of 2,880 photos, about 37 %. Ten days, one photo every five minutes.
Photos taken minutes apart make clouds and shadows jump. Cinematic blend fades the frames into each other.
Crossfade inserts dissolving in-between frames and raises the frame rate, so the speed stays the same and every photo stays sharp. Motion blur leaves a soft fading trail on anything that moves, like a long exposure.
--blend --blend-mode crossfade --blend-frames 2Trim the start and end, keep every Nth photo to speed things up, or cap the count for a quick test. FlashLapse tells you how long the film will be while you type, and the preview always shows exactly that selection.
1,440 of 2,880 photos selected at 24 fps.
Want to see it for real? Quick draft renders a small MP4 straight from the preview, with every correction applied, in seconds instead of minutes. Check it on your phone, then build the full-quality version.
Finds every photo in capture order. Rotated shots come out upright, broken files are skipped and reported.
Applies start, end, step and limit, exactly as in the preview.
Skips frames below your darkness threshold.
Downscales on every CPU core at once and keeps the result in a cache.
Deflicker and stabilization, measured on small copies, so they add seconds, not minutes.
Blends and writes H.264 or H.265 with the bundled ffmpeg. Then: Open video.
Downscaling thousands of 40-megapixel photos is the slow part of any timelapse. FlashLapse does it once, on every core, and remembers.
hvc1, so QuickTime and iPhones play it natively.The same engine runs from the terminal. Good for headless machines, scripts and a nightly job pointed at a webcam folder.
--skip-darkDrop night frames by brightness--deflickerSmooth exposure jumps--stabilizeRemove shake and drift--blendCrossfade or motion blur--diagnose-darknessPrint the brightness report# 24 fps, 1920 px wide, saved next to the DCIM folder
python timelapse.py /Volumes/CAMERA/DCIM
# Skip the nights, smooth the exposure, steady the shake
python timelapse.py /Volumes/CAMERA/DCIM \
--skip-dark --deflicker --stabilize
# Construction site: anchor to two rooftops that never change
python timelapse.py /Volumes/CAMERA/DCIM --stabilize \
--stabilize-mode anchor \
--stabilize-anchor 70,10,12,8 --stabilize-anchor 5,12,10,8
# Silky clouds: two in-between frames per photo (24 → 72 fps)
python timelapse.py /Volumes/CAMERA/DCIM --blend --blend-frames 2
# Full resolution, smaller file, every 3rd photo
python timelapse.py /Volumes/CAMERA/DCIM \
--width original --codec h265 --step 3No ads, no malware, just free and open to use. A self-contained app for macOS: no Python, no ffmpeg, nothing else to set up.
Open the .dmg and drag FlashLapse into Applications. Native on Apple silicon.
First launch: the app isn't signed yet, so right-click it and choose Open once.
The Windows app is on its way: one folder, no installer, no admin rights.