Cropping planetary videos

[Stefan87]

I recently tried to record the transit of Io accross Jupiter over 2.5 hours on my Nikon d5300 and Celestron 6se for the first time. My intent was to create a gif from 1 frame every 5 minutes made from a 60 second clip, stacked @ 25%. I couldn't find a way to make my Nikon camera automatically record at set intervals and after manually recording a couple of frames I realised that it would get very boring very quick, so I decided to record a long video and crop 1 minute clips from it later on.

In order to crop it I used DaVinci Resolve. However when I export the clip, the quality after stacking and wavelets is terrible compared to the raw clips I took from the camera. I was using the YouTube 1080p default for exporting as I thought if it's the same resolution as my camera then it should be right.

 

Does anybody have a recommendation on a way to crop small clips from a longer clip that won't affect the quality? If DaVinci Resolve is the best way, what codec/export quality settings should I be paying particular attention to? Please find attached the settings I was exporting my crops with.

 

Also, does anybody know a way to make a Nikon record videos of certain lengths at set intervals? I've looked for some time and come up with nothing. The creator of Backyard Nikon stated that it's a Nikon thing..something to do with SDK access? 🤷

 

Thanks guys

Edited August 30, 2021 by Stefan87

[CraigT82]

You can use PIPP to edit a long video into shorter ones. 

https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/

[Stefan87]

You're kidding? I had no idea.. such a rookie error. I will look into this. Thank you!

[MarkRadice]

PIPP would be my recommendation too. 
 

I also use the freeware VirtualDub to compile my timelapses into an AVI - after processing. Virtual Dub can also chop up videos to the desired length/frames too. 

[Tommohawk]

+1 for PIPP

[david_taurus83]

+2 for PIPP. I use it to create gifs as well.

You can also crop the image size down as well.