Timelapse Engine Delivering Up to 90% Less Storage and Cleaner Project History.
We replaced bulky raw video with automated timelapse capture, giving Ionic Rentals up to 90% storage savings while still preserving clear, reviewable visual records for every project.
Overview
For companies managing large sites such as construction, energy, logistics where visibility isn’t optional. But recording and storing full-resolution, 24/7 video from every camera is expensive, slow, and wasteful.
When Ionic Rentals approached Leaping Logic, the goal was clear: create a reliable, automated system to document site progress over months without drowning in data. The answer was a smarter time-lapse engine, one that captures every critical frame, eliminates noise, and delivers high-quality videos without human intervention. The idea matured into a fully automated system that generated daily time lapse videos which would be then combined to create weekly, monthly, and even yearly time-lapse videos powered by cameras running on solar energy.
Challenges
The previous system depended on motion-based recording from Eagle Eye Networks (EEN). Cameras only captured footage when activity was detected, meaning entire days of work could vanish if motion triggers failed. That approach caused recurring problems:
- Missing or inconsistent time-lapse frames
- Manual stitching that took hours per project
- Sky-high data storage and bandwidth costs
- Limited scalability for multi-site deployments
Clients needed something different: a system that was automatic, consistent, and cost-efficient across not just few but hundreds of remote cameras.
The Turning Point
Leaping Logic rebuilt the time-lapse engine from scratch. The aim wasn’t just to improve reliability, but to design an architecture that made time-lapse the smarter alternative to traditional video storage.
The team set four clear targets:
- Capture high-resolution images at consistent intervals
- Recover and self-heal missing frames automatically
- Saving short clips daily to capture images when necessary
- Generate daily, weekly, and project-long time lapses on demand
- Keep cloud storage predictable and affordable
Solution
1. Continuous Capture
Every active camera now takes high-resolution snapshots every ten minutes through the Eagle Eye API. Each image is validated and stored in AWS S3 with full timestamp integrity.
2. Smart Frame Recovery
If an image is missing, the system automatically requests short 10-second clips, extracts still frames with FFmpeg, and fills in the gaps. Result: continuous visual timelines, even when cameras go offline or motion detection fails.
3. Automated Video Creation
Cron jobs and queue workers process daily and weekly timelapse sequences. Using AWS Lambda and EC2 burst instances, the system balances cost and speed, generating MP4 videos ready for viewing in under 30 minutes.
4. Built-In Quality Assurance
Each morning, the system audits all timelapse images from the previous day. Any low-quality or timestamp-mismatched frames are replaced automatically, ensuring flawless continuity.
5. Cloud Optimization
Old clips are purged after 14 days once validated for completeness. Redis caching and queued jobs keep performance smooth and cost low, even across thousands of concurrent requests.
Results
Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
Missing Frames | 10–15% | <1% |
Manual Processing Time | 3–4 hrs/day | Fully automated |
Cloud Storage Costs | Unpredictable | ↓ 25–40% |
Video Generation Time | 2–3 hrs | <30 mins to generate 365 days worth videos |
User Complaints | Frequent | Near zero |
Why Time-lapse Videos Are Effective
Raw 24/7 video is overkill. Most of it captures nothing but stillness—and still eats through terabytes of cloud storage. Timelapse fixes that imbalance. By distilling motion into key frames, it preserves insight while cutting waste.
- Over 90% less storage — Fewer frames, same story.
- Faster processing — Smaller data sets mean faster generation and playback.
- No loss of clarity — Each frame remains high-res enough for inspection and proof.
- Predictable cost curve — No surprise cloud bills from runaway video uploads.
- Simplified archiving — Months of footage fit neatly into a single bucket folder.
For clients, that means visibility without compromise—progress captured precisely, stored efficiently, and ready to share in minutes.
Business Impact
Clients now access daily and weekly time lapses directly from their Ionic Rentals dashboard. What used to take hours of manual work now happens quietly in the background. The benefits compound over time:
- Consistent visual records for compliance and investor updates
- Instant access to historical project footage
- Reliable, lightweight monitoring across hundreds of sites
- Simplified audits and progress documentation
From Idea to Impact
Leaping Logic designed, developed, and deployed this feature for Ionic Rentals as part of a larger push to modernize their enterprise monitoring platform. It’s more than just automation. Its architecture built for robustness.
The time-lapse engine is now one of the platform’s defining advantages: reliable, lightweight, and powerful enough to handle thousands of cameras without breaking stride.
