Saving video sometimes creates two versions of same movie

[gb8080]

When I have created a movie, I go to the library, select it, and then choose Save video.
This works, but sometimes it creates two different copies of the same movie.

The two copies have the same date stamp (the date I made them) but strangely, they sometimes have different file sizes - and yet both seem to play okay. The file sizes can sometimes be nearly a factor of two different.

Why is this, what am I doing wrong, and if I delete one should I keep the long one (more information) or the short one (don't waste disk space)?

[xyster]

When you save the video are you saving a single video or a stack of videos (videos arranged in a fan)?
If you save a stack of videos, it will save them all. If you want to save only one of the videos of the stack, long tap the stack to view its contents and save only the videos you want.

You will get a fan of videos when the time lapse session is interrupted (say by a phone call in the middle). TimeLapse will save every film clip it was able to capture and a final edit of all film clips stitched together with a cross fade. When you tap the stack to view it, TimeLapse will automatically display the final edit.

[gb8080]

Ah, that answers the second question I was going to ask, which is why do I get more than one video shown in an overlapping heap if I take more than one on the same day, and how do I separate them?

This seems to happen to me quite often. You say it happens when a video is "interrupted". But does it also happen if I deliberately take more than one video on the same day? Or if I pause, try to cancel, and then restart? In those circs I don't really want a stack, I want to see separate videos so I can deal with them individually.

I now get the general idea of the stack, but I wish you had explained it somewhere. It's not intuitively obvious why it's done like that, or how to control it.

[gb8080]

Actually I don't think you've given a complete explanation for what I've found. I just looked more closely at a pair of videos saved by Timelapse. See the attachment.

These two videos have the same time code, and the same length (12 seconds). The video content is the same. But they have very different bitrates and so very different file sizes.

I think what happened is that there was a third, zero-second, video on the stack because I stopped and restarted. When I saved these videos, I just selected the stack and saved the file(s) to my camera roll.

Presumably therefor the stack was the 12s video that I wanted, a zero-second video, and a third which was the two stitched. For some reason, TimeLapse saved the first and third with completely different frame rates. I don't think it should have done that. I'm also now not sure which is the stitched video and which is the original one - would it be the smaller or larger file, how can I tell, how can I prevent this?

[xyster]

I have to look into the bitrate issue. Thanks for the report!

In general, the lower numbered movie (IMG_3028.MOV in this case) will be the stitched edit.

[gb8080]

Thanks, any progress on the bitrate issue yet?

[xyster]

I haven't gotten around to it yet. It is something I will check as part of the next TimeLapse release that I'm presently working on. Release date is TBD.