About Timelapse​

The evolution of Timelapse

Saul Greenberg created Timelapse. He is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Calgary. He specializes in Interaction Design research, with many publications to his credit.

Well over a decade ago, Saul observed a biologist colleague painfully working with camera trap images and the effort required to turn them into data. Saul decided to help, where he created the initial version of Timelapse.

Timelapse evolved as many others began using it. Because Timelapse is agnostic to its use, various professionals are amongst its users: ecologists, fishery scientists, sociologists and even engineers doing instrument monitoring. Saul regularly updated Timelapse to accomodate their feedback and feature requests, as well as to overcome inefficiencies from his own observations of how people used it.

Timelapse then incorporated image recognition. In particular, Microsoft’s AI for Earth MegaDetector project focused on recognition for camera trap images. They reached out to Saul to see if Timelapse could become an effective way for ecologists to incorporate image recognition into their workflow. Later, Saul collaborated with the creator of AddaxAI to further simplify how ecologists could use image recognition within Timelapse.

Metadata standards for camera traps were recently proposed by ecologists and agencies as a way for different organizations to share data. This is important, as the union of camera trap data provides better information about geographically broad ecosystems. Saul modified Timelapse yet again to accomodate a broad variety of metadata standards via an information hierarchy.

Timelapse academic publications

  1. Greenberg, S., Godin, T. and Whittington, J. (2019) User Interface Design Patterns for Wildlife-Related Camera Trap Image Analysis. Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 9 Issue 24:13706-13730. Wiley, December 2
    • Describes many of the major design ideas behind Timelapse features circa 2019.
  2. Greenberg, S. (2020) Automated Image Recognition for Wildlife Camera Traps: Making it Work for You. Research report, University of Calgary: Prism Digital Repository, August 21, 15 pages, See also video presentation
    • Oriented to Ecologists with no background in image recognition! You have likely heard about or read articles that apply automated image recognition to wildlife camera trap images. The basic idea is that the image recognition system will automatically analyze your images to locate and classify the wildlife species within them. But before you jump on the bandwagon, here are a few things you should know about.
  3. Schneider, S., Greenberg, S., Taylor, G.W. and Kremer, S.C. (2020) Three Critical Factors Affecting Automated Image Species Recognition Performance for Camera Traps. Ecology and Evolution, 10(7):3503-3517. Wiley, April 8. An open access article.
    • A study that highlights various factors that determine how well – or poorly – image recognition will work. on different species captured in camera trap images.
  4. Greenberg, S. and Godin, T. (2015) A Tool Supporting the Extraction of Angling Effort Data from Remote Camera Image (Feature Article). Fisheries Magazine, 40(6):276-287. American Fisheries Society, June.
    • Describes an earlier version of Timelapse as use by fisheries biologists.

Timelapse presentations and webinars

  1. Greenberg, S. (2024) Timelapse: An Image Analyzer for Camera Traps. Webinar, in Charting the Future: Wildlife Monitoring Towards 2030 Webinar Series, Hosted by Smithsonian Institution, Wildlife Conservation Society, and World Wildlife Fund, June 5th.
    • Video webinar. Introduced Timelapse to an audience comprising ecologists and developers of software related to wildlife monitoring and data collection.
  2. Greenberg, S. (2019) Pity the analyst: Designing software for image inspection. In Remote Cameras Workshop. (Held at Canmore Nordic Centre, Canmore, AB. Sponsored by Innovis, AB), Presentation: 35 slides with embedded video, March 25.
    • This slide deck is a presentation mostly based upon the academic publication: User interface design patterns for Wildlife-Related Camera Trap Image Analysis. It includes videos of various Timelapse features circa 2019.

Why Timelapse is free

Saul wants to help ecologists and other camera trap users make the planet a better place.

He is personally committed to the natural environment. He is an avid outdoor geek who spends a huge amount of time appreciating and playing in the backcountry. He lives next to Banff National Park in Canada, where his family either have worked for, or is working for Parks Canada.

As a computer science researcher, Saul values interacting with a real user community. His previous research efforts focused on developing futuristic interaction methods, many which are now in common use. Timelapse development is different, where he finds joy in developing software that is in immediate and active use by a broad international community.

While donations are appreciated, he understands that most ecologists are under-funded and do not have the resources to pay for expensive software and subscriptions.

If you can contribute, contact him and he will let you know how, e.g., through donations, as an academic grant, and/or contracts.

Past contributors include Microsoft and Google, where they provided modest funding as grants via the University of Calgary.