https://youtu.be/vHG-LawE9ME

I've been building a secure entry and logging system for our new local makerspace, and I realized it would be nice to have a timelapse of all the check ins and check outs.

Remembering there is a tool that is related to mplayer, the tool I used for my Tardis, I tried it out. Works out really nice!

First get the tool onto your machine:

```sudo apt install mencoder```

Next, we need some parameters:

* o - filename to output
* oac - copy: copy do not re-encode audio
* oac - mp3lame: MP3 with LAME.
* ovc - libavcodec (video codec)
* ovc:-  x264: H.264 codec
* lavcopts - MPEG-1 video
* of - output container format
 
To convert from one format to another you would do:

```mencoder input.mp4 -o converted.mp4 -ovc x264```

Another example

```mencoder input.mov -o output.avi -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video -of mpeg```

I have found, however, other tools produce more widely compatible files.

But that is not the issue today, we want to convert frames into timelapse. Turns out that is easy too:


```mencoder mf://*.JPG -mf fps=5:type=jpg -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:trell -oac copy -o output.avi```

You will see something like this:


```
Flushing video frames.
Writing index...
Writing header...
ODML: Aspect information not (yet?) available or unspecified, not writing vprp header.

Video stream: 6271.630 kbit/s  (783953 B/s)  size: 109753533 bytes  140.000 secs  701 frames
```

That's because I didn't set the frame aspect info - not necessary

To test it, of course, you can run it through mplayer:

```mplayer output.avi```