Dashboard Camera + Timelapse = Drivelapse

March 20, 2013 8:46 PM

Drivelapse: dashboard-camera footage of stretches of roadway, sped up via timelapse, often with annotations. For example, you can zoom through Zion Canyon or zig-zag down the Swiss Alps. Travel 250 miles from Beverly Hills to Las Vegas in 28 minutes. Or, Norwalk OH to Williamsburg VA: 550 miles in 17.5 minutes, approximately 1885 mph. Take a tour of Minneapolis surface roads or winding New England state highways. Or, tilt at windmills along the coast of the Strait of Gibraltar. ⚠MOTORIST WARNING: ANNOYING SOUNDTRACKS NEXT 10 MILES — PREPARE TO MUTE SOUND. ⚠

More roadtrips, condensed:

⛽ FreewayBrent covers most of the Western and Mountain timezones, but also manages to capture a few other places. • I-80 East from Truckee to the CA/NV border, thrugh the Truckee River Canyon • I-95 N from Warwick, RI to Attleboro, MA • I-15 N in AZ, through the Virgin River Gorge

⛽ Barbiepoledancer does Milwaukee to Philly in an hour plus change.

⛽ New Blue Productions drives through Cebu, Philippines

⛽ TheSolarcatcher captures the Midwest. • I-80 W through the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa, • US-20 E, the Rockford Bypass

⛽ Rockersk08: More of the Desert West. Here’s I-515 S, the Great Basin Highway.

⛽ FreewayJim covers a lot of the Eastern US. • NJ Turnpike at dusk • The Big Dig in Boston: Ted Williams Tunnel at the Eastern Terminus of I-90, and Route 1 from Peabody (where I learned how to drive), across the Tobin and Zakim bridges and into the South Station Tunnel. • US-302 from Littleton, NH to Wells River, VT.

⛽ Texas Freeways doesn’t just cover Texas, but a variety of other places • I-70 in Colorado through the Glenwood Canyon • State Highway 130 towards Austin, where you can travel 85MPH • Mt. Evans Road in Colorado, the highest paved road in the US

⛽ TheHighwayMan covers lots of road. • Crossing the Sault Ste. Marie bridge from Michigan into Canada • Downtown Seattle on I-90 •

⛽ InterstateKyle covers a lot of the West, including this drive up US-34, Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado • I-10 E driving by Joshua Tree, an elevation gain of 1700+ feet. • US-50 from Carson City, NV, to Lake Tahoe

⛽ eluko79 covers the upper midwest, including , and into a storm on US-12 • I-70 E into Saint Louis, skirting the Gateway Arch. (also features a cool zoom-in intro from Google Earth.) •

⛽ aswchris has a lot of Northwestern and Central Europe taken care of. • The N12, Morlaix, France • Documenting road downgrading in the Netherlands • The R6 ending in Prague, Czech Rep. • On Autobahn 71 through various mountain tunnels in the Thuringen Forest, Germany

⛽ CosmoPhotography likes the night tours: Miami and South Beach • NYC and Times Square . . . and the daytime, too: Cambridge and Downtown Boston, MA • I-40, the Research Triangle in Durham, NC •

⛽ Caminoandaluz has Spain covered. • The N-340 around the coast of the Strait of Gibraltar • Through Downtown Cadiz • Through Toledo Province

⛽ SoutherReadGeek does what it says on the tin.

⛽ MyDriveLapse lives up to their moniker, plus they offer a “How To Drivelapse" page.

⛽ Alaska to South Carolina!

⛽ Calais docks to Dordogne, France

⛽ User bmbsage does a drivelapse from Detroit to the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto, just so he can get some good Trinidadian food.

⛽ Pacific Coast Highway

⛽ Roadtripshoes covers a lot of Big Sky Country

⛽ Party of the Third Part takes the 101 South out of San Francisco at dawn, featuring a cool little dashboard and ok music once the narrator stops talking.

⛽ Hippies driving through backroads of Hawaii

⛽ Kootnenay National Park, British Columbia, CAN

⛽ ...And Norway by motorcycle.

Anyway, you get the idea. Do a youtube search for "drivelapse" + "[placename]", strap in, and go for a ride.

posted by not_on_display (17 comments total)

I've done a few of these on short drives around Houston using my Galaxy Nexus and it's time-lapse camera function. Pretty fun.
posted by mrbill at 8:47 PM on March 20

Fantastic post!
posted by dunkadunc at 8:57 PM on March 20

I should build a youtube playlist of all of these, mute it, and start a trance radio station on spotify and sit here and sip margaritas until I fall asleep.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 9:00 PM on March 20 [3 favorites]

Awesome. Much more interesting than I would have thought.
posted by skewed at 9:21 PM on March 20

Related, with artistic license, par Michel Gondry. (Or maybe his brother.)
posted by tss at 9:25 PM on March 20 [1 favorite]

What would be the best iOS app for this?
posted by sourwookie at 9:27 PM on March 20

What would be the best iOS app for this?

I don't know if it's the *best*, but this is one app for this. Full disclosure: the author of this app is a friend of mine.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 9:53 PM on March 20

What would be the best iOS app for this?

Ironically, each video I've clicked on (on iOS 5) has presented me with a "not available on this platform" warning.

Probably just as well for me. I should be driving to Vegas, not watching it.
posted by ShutterBun at 11:06 PM on March 20

Remember, it's very important to film the whole thing in portrait mode.
posted by blue_beetle at 1:06 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

koooyaaaaaaaanisqaaaatsiiiiiiiiiiiiii
posted by ardgedee at 5:43 AM on March 21

I don't know which is worse: Admitting I watched enough of barbiepoledancer's roadtrip to watch her drive through downtown Cleveland twice after getting misrouted, or that I could recognize that she had done it, and acccurately guess at what she had meant to do.
posted by ardgedee at 6:51 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

I have one of these I made with a webcam and a laptop covering the ride from suburban Boston to a small town in Quebec north of Ottawa that features, among other things, me getting lost at night in Burlington, VT, a stop at a lone outhouse in the Gatineau hills, and the driveway of a certain Metafilter mod's house in VT. I would post it to YouTube but, aside from those three things, it's about twice as boring as the actual ride itself.
posted by bondcliff at 6:54 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

Mine: Houston Westheimer Drive Time Lapse and Drive to North Houston - Time Lapse.
posted by mrbill at 8:55 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

Driving through Zion completely misses the point. Gotta hike!
posted by Rashomon at 1:30 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]

Better yet are the videos where a frame is taken based on the interval of distance traveled rather than the interval of time gone by. The results are constant-speed and spectacular but considerably more difficult to do, usually requiring a Racelogic or Datron electronic "fifth-wheel" setup for truly dead-on results. Alas, I can find no examples but have worked with folks doing these for video surveys of entire road systems in Canada. On playback, their stuff appears to be traveling at a constant 1800 m.p.h. -- even through stoplights, alleyways and parking lots.
posted by bz at 1:59 PM on March 21

"Better yet are the videos where a frame is taken based on the interval of distance traveled rather than the interval of time gone by."
 —bz

I'd like a way to have google streetview do this: take me from x to y at n frames per second.
posted by not_on_display at 2:53 PM on March 21

I do this for my daily commute, using my GoPro HD2. I also do it when I go on road trips. I have a Vimeo page dedicated to it all.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 7:19 PM on March 21 [1 favorite]