Create a Star Trails Timelapse Video

To learn more about Star Trails, check out my new Star Trails Course on howtube:
www.howtube.com/series/JOx736sk
In this video I'll show you how to create a beautiful star trails timelapse video. You will need StarStaX for this workflow, which you can download using the link below.
markus-enzweiler.de/software/...
We'll start off editing the RAW photos in Adobe Bridge + Camera RAW. Be sure to fix the exposure, white balance, contrast, and saturation. Also, head to the Detail tab and lower the "Sharpening" slider to 0. You may also want to increase the "Noise Reduction" slider to around 10 -20.
After you've made your edits, save the RAWs as JPEGS in a new folder. Next, use StarStaX to create a demo star trails image. This will show off any problems with your edits. If the final star trails image doesn't look good, you can always go back and re-edit your RAW photos again. If the star trails image looks good though, besides the planes, you can continue on.
We'll head to Photoshop next and begin removing any planes or distracting lights from every single photo. This is optional, but highly recommended. Consider this - every light will be burned into the final video. Therefore, if a plane flies through the image within the first few photos, it will be there for the rest of the timelapse.
After all the plane trails have been removed from the individual JPEG photos, you can head back to StarStaX. Run through the processing again, this time using "Save After Each Step" option. We'll use these JPEGS to create the final video.
Finally, go back to Photoshop and click File - Open. Click on the first photo in the StarStaX folder, then click the "Open Image Sequence" button. Now click "Open" and Photoshop will take all of those photos and convert them to a video file. I recommend 24 FPS.
Feel free to add any Adjustment Layers you want to the video. I'd recommend a Curves, Vibrance, and a few Selective Colors.
00:00 - Intro
01:04 - Camera RAW Processing
08:04 - Test Photos for Problems
10:13 - Remove Planes and Lights
14:38 - Use StarStaX to Create Timelapse Photos
16:36 - Fix remaining problems
19:42 - Create Timelapse Video
25:58 - Outro

[@user-jm9iw6mm9o]

Thanks a lot for the detailed walk through

[@ganeshwade1214]

Best tutorial i ever seen on Star Trails Timelapse thanks for making this video 😁😁😁

[@dedelstein]

Excellent video. I’m going to check out your How To class as I’ve been messing around with star trails videos but doing very minimal edits. I like the results but see how much better they can be. Question: some of your videos seem to show the camera panning. How do you do that? If you teach it in the class, more reason for me to go there!

[@amitdutta8768]

Very nice tutorial. Thanks Peter.

[@reallymustgetalife]

Very interesting. Thank you!

[@hazarussell]

Very informative video. Thank you for the education

[@marcinb493]

Amazing. Thx Peter.

[@doco6186]

Cool. I'll have to try. How long was each exposure and what was the interval between exposures?

[@Amanlikeme]

I see you don't interact in the comments much but I'm hoping you might here. I'm not much of a photographer but I'm curious, you've taken many star trails I'm sure, but I'm wondering, are there any differences in characteristics in photos between a stable camera and a slowly panned camera in either direction a foot or two, one left to right, and another right to left, moving stars into and out of frame? Yes, it would be a shorter photo than a time lapse, but at the right angle you could shoot 360 degrees, but it would be a bit time consuming. If you have a common background everything will be blurred but if you're shooting the sky at night at the stars, other than the stars trails appearing straight as oppose to circular, are there any other characteristic differences between the stationary and moving camera that would be prevalent to be able to distinguish the difference between the two methods? Would you be able to tell if the night sky is blurring or if the star trails are printing differently in some way?

[@user-jm9iw6mm9o]

Thx

[@JeanDoesFilm]

what's your recommended time interval between shots?

[@3thomasH]

On my Mac, StarStax now requires tiff images, it used to take jpgs.

[@nikivan]

It takes a long time to use Photoshop to preview each image. Instead you could use a free tool called FastStone Image Viewer.

[@Musthafa_EM]

Could you please help me to convert nightlapse in to star trails.

[@f1remandg]

I’m sorry but this reminds me of listening to firstly an artificial recording, apologies, I don’t mean this in an offensive way, the content and information is correct, it’s like one of my favourite writers, Bill Bryson he is an incredible writer both funny with a wit that makes one laugh out loud in his books on countries and incredibly interesting in his books on the universe, body and home, but the best example of why his audible books are narrated by other people, is a walk in the woods, they even made a film out of it, but wow, he can’t narrate 😮 nearly all his books are narrated by other individuals for that reason.
Please take this comment in the way it is meant, not as a criticism, but an truthful observation, it’s such a shame as I said at the start, the info is spot on. DG U.K. PS I watch lots of Tubes on a variety of subjects and only give honest reviews.

[@crateer]

1:41 ahh yes, the star is so bright it shines right through the mountain 😂

[@samsen3965]

Very nice but honestly too much work.
Question: The foreground doesn't change. So why don't you do a foreground correction like removing those two separate light tracings (? Somebody hiking down the mountain with a headlamp in the middle of the night!) in the final image? Sounds a lot easier to me.

[@pawelthe1606]

If its too much work dont do it then !!!

[@samsen3965]

@@pawelthe1606
It's all seeing and planning. Not too much work at all.