Tutorial Guides

Don’t Panic!
The number of guides (some with video companions) may give you the impression that Timelapse is difficult to use. It isn’t. The Quick Start Guide is likely all you need to get going, where you can try it out on the Practice image set. Once you have tried Timelapse, you can then peruse the Reference Guide and the Template Guide for details, additional features and workflow tips.

Other guides touch upon optional advanced features. The Image Recognition Guide illustrates how to use and incorporate image recognition into your work flow, while the Metadata guide explains how to associate folder-level hierarchical metadata with your image data. The Database Guide is likely of interest to only a handful of people who want to access data held in the database directly rather than through exported CSV files.

The Videos lessons page supplement the guides. Each lesson provides a short introduction to a particular Timelapse function or concept.

Part 1: Quick Start Guide

This starter guide will get you going. It explains how to download Timelapse, and how to use Timelapse to load, inspect, and turn image and video files into data. It walks you through a subset of basic but important Timelapse features within a sample workflow.

You should also download the practice image set. This zip file of a folder contains an example Timelapse template, and sub-folders with images and videos. As the Quick Start Guide’s examples are based on this image set, you can use Timelapse on it to actually do what the Guide says.

Part 2: Reference Guide

This reference guide continues where the QuickStart guide leaves off. It offers new features plus greater details of those features covered in Quickstart. Workflow tips are also covered. You should at least scan this guide, as it may help you create an even more efficient workflow. Try out those features using the practice image set as explained in this reference.

Part 3: Template Guide

The Timelapse Template Editor lets you specify a template containing the custom data fields you want your analysts to fill in. This guide how to use the Timelapse Template Editor, and how you can update templates after the fact. It is essential reading for those who plan to create and/or edit templates.

Part 4: Image Recognition Guide

This guide explains image recognition, an optional feature in Timelapse. It describes how to submit your images to an image recognition system, and how to use image recognition data within your workflow to make it even more efficient. The second video is a supplement, where it more generally describes the power and limitations of image recognition. Download the image recognition practice set so you can follow along while reading this guide.

Part 5: Metadata Guide

This guide explains how to associate folder-level metadata with your image set and how to fill it in. It also includes several metadata standards. While optional, defining and using folder-level metadata can add considerable richness to the data you collect. It also explains how metadata standards encourage data sharing between different agencies, where data that follow that standard can be uploaded to a common repository.

Part 6: Database Guide

This guide explains the internal structure of Timelapse database tables. If you want to access the database directly, rather than the exported spreadsheet, read on. Otherwise you can ignore this guide.