Frequently Asked Questions
Timelapse crashes
Crashes are fairly rare, but do occur. If it happens, this is what you can do.
1. Send the bug report to the Timelapse creator so he can fix it.
2. Restart Timelapse. In most cases, you will be able to pick up where you left off, with no data loss. This is because your data is saved every time you enter it.
3. If the restart doesn’t work or the problem persists, contact saul@ucalgary.ca and send him a description of what happened (and the original bug report, if you can). He will try to fix it. To save time, create and mail a zip file of your .ddb and .tdb files to saul.greenberg@gmail.com (this differs from the previous email which doesn’t accept zip files) as it will help him figure out the issue.
4. If needed, try restoring your work with a backup. Timelapse creates time-stamped backups of your .tdb and .ddb files as you use it. If you think that you may have lost some data or that your file is corrupted, you can try copying one of the backup files into your root folder. Before doing that, we do recommend you copy your original files and the backup folder somewhere else, as Timelapse will delete older backups as new backups are made. Backups are explained in the Timelapse Reference Guide, Section 2: Files and Folders.
The problem
Your timelapse (.tdb and .tdb) files were previously upgraded when you or someone else used a recent (>2.3.0.0) version of Timelapse to open them. This upgrade is not backwards-compatable.
You are now trying to open those files with an older version (pre 2.3) of Timelapse, which corrupted those files and caused the crash.
The solution
1. Download and install the latest Timelapse software as normal
2. Open the files that have failed previously.
3. It will ask you to upgrade them again.
4. Do so, which will fix the Timelapse files (your images are unaffected).
To avoid this problem
Make sure you are using at least Timelapse version 2.3.0.0 or later, as otherwise the problem can arise again.
Using Timelapse in a large organizations and on different computers
Timelapse was developed to run within Microsoft Windows. This means that you will need to try one of these workarounds to have it run natively on an Apple or Linux computer.
1. Use a Windows emulator on your Apple or Linux computer (e.g., commercially available software such as Parallels or VMWare). Timelapse can then be downloaded and run within the emulator.
2. Use a Windows-based virtual machine accessible via the cloud. If you are part of an agency, this would normally be set up by your agency’s systems goup – ask them if they can do this. You would then connect to that virtual machine via your Apple or Linux computer, for example, to run it within a browser.
Yes, but it does require some discipline. The good news is that Timelase is being used in very large organizations with many analysts across a variety of projects containing millions of images. Visit this page for full details.
Privacy and Security
Timelapse is just a standard Windows application that doesn’t do much beyond writing a few files (for storing your data and any backups). As far as I know there have been no security or privacy problems reported from its many users over many years. While there are no guarantees, you may want to visit the privacy and security page for information that may help lessen your concerns.
Recent versions of Windows always warns about programs that are unsigned or that were not installed through its installation packages.
Why?
Timelapse is unsigned, simply because signing requires a fairly pricey yearly fee.
Timelapse installs through a zip file rather than an installation package. This is because installation packages often require administrative privileges to run on locked-down institutional machines, i.e., where an end-user would have to ask (and wait for) a systems person to do the installation.
And what does this mean?
The above means that you have to give Windows permission to run Timelapse whenever you downloaded it afresh. This just takes a few clicks, as explained on the Download page.
Performance
When Timelapse loads your image and video files for the first time, it opens and analyzes each file in order to extract some data. While each file is processed quickly, hundreds of thousands to millions of images will take some time. You can speed things up by considering where your files are located, the network you may be using, the file size, and others. Visit this page to see how to maximize performance.
While Timelapse normally displays images quickly even when a network file server is used, its speed can be severely compromised by various factors. The network may be inherently slow or overwhelmed with other traffic. Significant network overhead could be introduced to verify security settings. The network may not be configured to cache files for more rapid access. The best things to do in these cases is:
1. Ask your systems person to look into it, and adjust the network settings accordingly.
2. Avoid the problem by copying the images to your local disk, process them, and then copy the results (actually just the .ddb file) back.
One user reported how their IT group solved their particular network file system performance bottle neck thorugh opslocks and additional ips. To explain (or better yet, point your IT person at this), opslock and additional ips can help improve file access performance and security. Opslock stands for opportunistic locking, which is a lock placed by a client on a file residing on a server. In most cases, a client requests an opslock so it can cache data locally, thus reducing network traffic and improving apparent response time. Opslocks are used by network redirectors on clients with remote servers, as well as by client applications on local servers1. Opslocks coordinate data caching and coherency between clients and servers and among multiple clients1. Additional ips are extra IP addresses that can be assigned to a network interface or a virtual machine. They can be used for various purposes, such as load balancing, fault tolerance, or hosting multiple services on the same machine2. Additional ips can also be used to create private endpoints for Azure Storage accounts, which allow clients on a virtual network (VNet) to securely access data over a Private Link3. The private endpoint uses a separate IP address from the VNet address space for each storage account service3. Network traffic between the clients on the VNet and the storage account traverses over the VNet and a private link on the Microsoft backbone network, eliminating exposure from the public internet3.
By adding opslock and some additional ips at the storage end, you can reduce network latency and bandwidth consumption by caching data locally on the client machines using opslocks1.
Timelapse file management on local disks, network drives, and the cloud
While it is technically possible, the short answer is we don’t recommend it. There are several reasons why.
1. Cloud-based systems often have serious performance issues in getting and retrieving information on the fly.
2. Users have reported problems with weird security or access settings by such systems.
The above means that when Timelapse tries to accesses files and/or its database, network delays or security issues may cause it to fail or to time out or not write its data, leading to unpredictable consequences.
If you do keep your image set files in such cloud-based systems, we recommend coping the image set to your local machine, analyzing them there with Timelapse, then copying the ddb and tdb data files back to the cloud.
The usual cause is that the permissions on your folder or file are not set correctly. This sometimes happens when your root folder and images are located on a network drive or the cloud (e.g., Google Drive, OneDrive or DropBox), as the default configuration is often read-only.
Unless you are systems-savvy, it may be difficult for you to figure out the permissions, and even harder for you to change them.
There are two solutions.
1. If you have a systems person, tell them you need full edit permission on both the folders and files, plus the ability for Timelapse to write a file (e.g., Timelapse uses SQLite which creates a temporary lock file when it writes to the database).
2. A better and easier solution is to merely copy the folder / sub-folder to your own local drive (the added benefit is that everything will run faster). After you are done analyzing the images, you only have to copy the .ddb file back to the network drive or cloud.1.
Image metadata
As an example, you may see that the image (or video) includes the current temperature in its burnt-in banner, but temperature is not listed in the image’s metadata.
When you ask Timelapse to show a file’s metadata, it can only lists fields that it can find and interpret. Sometimes the metadata just isn’t available.
There are several probable causes to this.
1. The camera vendor burns the information onto the image, but does not store it in the image’s metadata.
2. The camera vendor does store the information in the image’s metadata, but its in a camera-specific format (e.g. often – but not always – in a field called ‘MakerNotes’). Decoding that format usually requires camera-specific software. Extracting camera-specific metadata is also more difficult for video files, as the metadata standard is not well-specified.
3. The camera vendor does not include that metadata information.
4. While image (jpg) files follow standards for storing certain metadata fields, video file metadata is somewhat ad-hoc.
Timelapse provides two tools for examining an image’s metadata: MetadataExtractor and ExifTool. MetadataExtractor is fast. ExifTool is slower but more powerful, as it knows how to decode camera-specific data from a broad variety of cameras. If ExifTool doesn’t display the metadata you want, its likely that other general metadata extraction tools won’t show it either.
Camera trap images often display information in a banner, e.g., a date stamp, and perhaps other camera specific information such as temperature, moon phase, etc. This is normally- but not always – available as metadata.
If the image metadata can’t be used, it is technically possible – but not easy – extract infromation from the burnt-in text on the image. For example, Jason Karl (University of Idaho) developed a camera specific solution to do this (the Browning Strik Force camera). If you are a technically savvy programmer, may be able to modify his program. I haven’t tried it myself, but here is the link to it: Browning Camera Photo Processing
Dates and times
By default, Timelapse orders images by its relative path (i.e., the folder its in) and then by date. You can use the Sort menu to change the sort criteria, where Timelapse will re-sort your files accordingly.
The sort order of an image set is usually remembered between Timelapse sessions. So if you (or someone else) has sorted by something other than date, then your images won’t show up in date order.
Video dates can be problematic, While photos usually embed a standardized time stamp of the date taken in its metadata, videos either don’t include the date, or place the date in a non-standard field. This makes it difficult for Timelapse to reliably determine when the video was taken.
Consequently, Timelapse falls back to the file creation time, as this usually matches the time the images was taken. Unfortunately, file manipulations may not preserve the original file creation time. However, a file’s creation date sometimes changes in unpredictable ways, e.g., when copying videos from your camera card to cloud storage, or when emailing them, or when converting your video from one format to another, etc. What that means is that for some videos, the correct date information may simply be unavailable (even if you see the correct date burnt into the video image).
Here are three work-arounds you can try to get the correct date.
1. Use the Timelapse Edit| Dates |Read date and time from metadata… option. This will list all metadata fields that could be read as dates or times. If one contains the correct date/time, you can select that and ask Timelapse to scan all files and update the date to whatever is in that selected metadata field. Files missing that metadata field will be ignored. To make sure you don’t affect your image files, you may want to use the Select menu to select only video files.
2. If the creation date isn’t what you expect, do some tests to see if and where your video date was changed. Then alter your workflow to try to ensure the correct date is maintained, e.g., how files are copied, or use the strategy outlined below.
3. If you do have the correct date when your videos are stored in one location but need to move them elsewhere in a manner that does change the date, load your videos as an image set into Timelapse before moving the files, as it will extract and record that date. Moving your image set around afterwards (e.g., for later analysis on a different machine) will then preserve the dates as part of its data, as it will already have been recorded.
Camera-specific issues
TLS files are actually AVI video files, where images are stored as frames in the video. To use them with Timelapse, you have to extract those images. A description of how to do that is found on this page: Viewing and Extracting Images from Browning TLS Files
Navigation
When you select a field, such as a Note, it becomes the input focus. Thus the arrow key moves back and forward through its text so you can edit it.
In these cases, a <SHIFT>Arrow key will always move to the previous/ next image
Video playback
The software Timelapse uses to play / show videos is the one supplied by the Windows operating system. As Timelapse doesn’t do anything else with the video, the problem usually stems from your computer’s video settings, or that it is missing or using an out of date video codec (compressor/decompressor).
If the videos play on a different computer, then its almost certainly an issue with Windows (not Timelapse).
Others with this issue have fixed this issue by trying the solutions on this page: How do I fix video playback?
Image recognition
Mitch Fennell and others from UBC did a study on the Megadetector image recognizer on a real image set (Timelapse uses MegaDetector as part of EcoAssist). They found an increase in efficiency of 500% over purely manual labeling. Their article reports details, and is worth reading.
View the article
Mitchell Fennell, Christopher Beirne and A. Cole Burton, Use of object detection in camera trap image identification: Assessing a method to rapidly and accurately classify human and animal detections for research and application in recreation ecology, Global Ecology and Conservation, 10.1016/j.gecco.2022.e02104, 35, e02104, 1-Jun-(2022).
The problem is almost certainly due to a mismatch between how files and paths are named in the .json file vs. how they are named in the Timelapse database. To explain:
1. Timelapse locates files by its relative path to the folder holding the template. For example, if the template is in the folder MyImages, and IMG_01.JPG is located in a subfolder named Station1, the image location is recorded relative to the MyImages folder:
– its relative path is Station1
– its File name is IMG_01.JPG
– so its location is simply Station1/IMG_01.JPG
2. The paths written to describe a file’s location in the JSON file must exactly match the above location.
3. You can check this as follows.
– Make a copy of the recognition.json file (just in case).
– Open that copy in a text editor – I use EditPad Lite (free) as it can handle really large text files.
4. Check if the paths are what would be expected (the path for each file is recorded in the “file” field). Often, a prefix to the path is either added or missing due to how files were submitted to Megadetector. For example,
– a correct path would be recorded as:
“file”: “Station1/IMG_01.JPG”.
– an incorrect path, which in this case includes the root folder name, would be
“file”: “MyImages/Station1/IMG_01.JPG”
Solutions
1. The simplest thing to do is
a) rerun EcoAssist on the folder you want to recognize (it will search the subfolders as well).
b) Don’t move the recognition file!
c) Use the Timelapse recognition menu to import the recognition file back into Timelapse.
2. Using the text editor mentioned above, edit the paths to their correct value. Do a global replace to add or remove the appropriate prefix. Then try to import the .json file back into Timelapse.
3. Megadetector provides an application for adjusting paths, as it recognizes this as a common problem. For replacing parts of a path, there is a checkbox named ‘enable replacement’. The app is a bit complex to use, but it handles many complex situations, such as when you split your folders up to contain multiple Timelapse database. See this page to download the app.
Absolutely.
1. Add your new images to Timelapse in the usual manner (i.e., File | Add images and video files to this image set)
2. Start EcoAssist using the Recognition menu.
3. When it asks you for which folder to recognize, select the folder containing the new images.
4. When EcoAssist is done, just load the recognition file that EcoAssist created in that folder.
Well, yes and no.
EcoAssist does have options in its advanced mode that will let you run the recognizer, where it will examine each frame (or every nth frame if you choose) and produce a video_recognition file containing those recognitions.
However, Timelapse makes no use of video recognitions. Those recognitions are not included in the timelapse_recognition file. Even if it was included, Timelapse is not yet able to display bounding boxes atop of video.
Perhaps in the future?
Template editor questions
The reason is that default values are used to populate fields only when images are loaded for the first time.
If you want to change all your defaults to a new value, try the following workaround.
Let’s assume:
1. You had set a default (for example, a text field called Comment to ‘Not applicable’)
2. You then opened up an image set
3. You started coding up images, where you had changed some of the Comment fields
4. You now want to change all of ‘Not applicable’ to ‘N/A’ but leave any of the modified comments alone.
So…
1. Choose Select | Custom Select
2. Click the Comment field to use it
3. Set the operation to ‘=’
4. Enter the old default text ‘Not applicable’
5. Click Ok. The images displayed will be filtered, so that only the ones whose Comment contains ‘Not applicable’ will be selected.
6. Change the Comment field on the current image to the new default text ‘N/A’
7. Right-click the Comment field and select Copy to All… to update all the fields with this new value.
8. Choose Select | All files to view all your files again.