Sky Camera - creating the video

So there's a bit of a story on how to create a timelapse video from the CCTV footage saved by the camera. I'll start by saying it's not just plug and play 🤣

Background

Keep in mind the camera is designed for CCTV, so it's main functions for viewing videos are basic playing back (at various speeds) and capturing movement activity clips for when it detects movement (ie cars, people, animals). It also will store these on various storage medium:

Internal SD card - full video capture as per recording schedule with individual clips of detected activity

Cloud storage via WiFi (chargeable service) - only stores individual clips of detected activity

Network Attached Storage (NAS) - full video capture only

I decided to use the Internal SD Card for storage as it was the simplest for normal operation. 

The process 

To access the video stream on the camera you have to use a phone or tablet (Android or iOS) and use the Tapo App, there is no Windows PC option. When you select the camera on the Tapo app you'll be presented with the live stream. On the screen will be an option "Playback & Download". From this screen you can select date/time to playback as well as being able to see any captured clips of activity. So to get the video from the camera playback to your phone or tablet there's a few steps

1. Select the date your looking for (only dates marked with blue dots will have video)

2. Select the playback speed - I use 2x as it gives the best end result for a smooth timelapse

3. Start playback of video and use the slider bar to scroll to the correct time

4. Select the "Record" button (might be a video camera icon) to start recording 

5. Let the video run & record to the point you want it to stop (see note below)

6. Select the "Record" button to stop recording 

7. The video should automatically be saved to your devices photo's app. Possibly is a folder or album called "Tapo"

Note: if your timelapse spans midnight you'll have to stop one recording just before midnight and start again on the next day's playback. This will create 2 videos that will need merged when editing

Now you should have a video clip saved on your device that's saved at 2x normal speed. The last step is to load this into your favourite video editing app, increase the speed to your desired timelapse speed (I use 32x which when applied to an already 2x video gives an end result of 64x or roughly 1 minute of video for every hour of playback). You can also combine your videos if you had to split the playback as indicated in the note above. Add any embellishments you want, maybe a sound track or title and save/publish

That's it - you should have a finished timelapse. Well done!!!

Next step: Remote viewing of the CCTV camera