Dashboard Camera + Timelapse = Drivelapse
March 20, 2013 8:46 PM   Subscribe

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 CanyonI-95 N from Warwick, RI to Attleboro, MAI-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 CanyonState 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 CanadaDowntown 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, ColoradoI-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-12I-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, FranceDocumenting road downgrading in the NetherlandsThe 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 BeachNYC and Times Square . . . and the daytime, too: Cambridge and Downtown Boston, MAI-40, the Research Triangle in Durham, NC

Caminoandaluz has Spain covered. • The N-340 around the coast of the Strait of GibraltarThrough Downtown CadizThrough 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) 42 users marked this as a favorite
 
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, 2013


Fantastic post!
posted by dunkadunc at 8:57 PM on March 20, 2013


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, 2013 [3 favorites]


Awesome. Much more interesting than I would have thought.
posted by skewed at 9:21 PM on March 20, 2013


Related, with artistic license, par Michel Gondry. (Or maybe his brother.)
posted by tss at 9:25 PM on March 20, 2013 [1 favorite]


What would be the best iOS app for this?
posted by sourwookie at 9:27 PM on March 20, 2013


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, 2013


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, 2013


Remember, it's very important to film the whole thing in portrait mode.
posted by blue_beetle at 1:06 AM on March 21, 2013 [1 favorite]


koooyaaaaaaaanisqaaaatsiiiiiiiiiiiiii
posted by ardgedee at 5:43 AM on March 21, 2013


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, 2013 [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, 2013 [1 favorite]




Driving through Zion completely misses the point. Gotta hike!
posted by Rashomon at 1:30 PM on March 21, 2013 [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, 2013


"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, 2013


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, 2013 [1 favorite]


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