This repository contains the source code for and releases of Timelapse 2, created by Saul Greenberg of the University of Calgary and Greenberg Consulting Inc, and revised with the help of others.

Timelapse2 is an Image Analyser for Camera Traps, where it is used by scientists to visually analyze and encode data from thousands of images and videos. See the Timelapse web site for packaged downloads, a tutorial guide and manual oriented towards end-users, and other resources.

Timelapse is currently in use across the world by various biologists and resource managers within broadly varying institutions --- national and regional parks, ecological agencies, fishery departments, conservation societies, university groups, etc. --- for quite different needs (e.g., wildlife monitoring, fisheries usage, resource monitoring and management). What they have in common is

• they collect large numbers of images from one to very many field cameras
• they are interested in examining images and encoding data that is usually specific to their projects
• they have their own needs and ways for performing analytics on that data. Timelapse 2 helps in the 2nd step, where users then export the data so that it can be analyzed in another package of their choosing (e.g., R, spreadsheets, etc.)

We are now working with Microsoft's AI for Earth, where one of their team perform image recognition of wildlife images submitted to Timelapse imports a recognition file they produce, and displays detected items within bounding boxes. Queries can be run against recognized entities.

Bug reports, feature requests, and feedback are most welcome. Let us know! We can't improve the system if we don't hear from you. If you wish to co-develop this project, see below.

Timelapse was originally designed for a fisheries biologist who ran many field cameras in Timelapse mode, hence its name. Over time, its interface and functionality has been extended to meet the needs of a broad variety of biologists who use field cameras in many different ways.

In 2016, another developer joined forces to overhaul Timelapse for improved code quality and flexibility. In late 2016, our coding effort diverged: see Carnassial - although it appears that development has ceased on that project. Divergence happened mostly due to differing project requirements.

This repository begins at Timelapse Version 2.2.0.0

If you wish to co-develop this project, contact saul.greenberg@ucalgary.ca to see if our project goals coincide.

Install Visual Studio, and then include the options below:

• Common Tools -> GitHub Extension for Visual Studio

After installation clone the repository locally through Visual Studio's Team Explorer or by using a GIT interface such as SourceTree.

• clone the repo locally through Visual Studio's Team Explorer or GitHub's clone or download options
• install Visual StyleCop (Tools -> Extensions and Updates -> Online)

After installation clone the repository locally through Visual Studio's Team Explorer or by using a GIT interface such as SourceTree.

Development must be done against .NET 4.5, as we target Timelapse users who may not have newer versions available on their systems or the ability to update .NET (e.g., locked down institutional machines).

Also helpful are

• Atlassian's SourceTree, a recommended augmentation of the git support available in Visual Studio's Team Explorer.
• Nuget Package Manager for accessing and including 3rd party packages used by Timelapse.
• The Visual Studio Image Library for icons.
• John Skeet's discussion of DateTime, DateTimeOffset, and TimeZoneInfo limitations.

• Timelapse and the template editor require .NET 4.5 or newer.
• Timelapse and the template editor are tested on Windows 10 and - as far as we know - should run without issue on earlier versions of Windows. End users will need to install .NET 4.5 or newer if it's not already present. However, expect some performance degradation on really old machiines or Windows versions, as they are less able to handle rapid display of large images.
• Timelapse uses various packages (including dlls available via NuGet). See the License file for a list of packages and their particular license terms.s
• Screen size of 1600 x 900 or larger is preferred, although it is usable on smaller displays.