Timelapse

Timelapse

What this page will help you do

Record a video of a print - one picture per layer, turned into a film when the print finishes - and understand the two settings that decide whether the result looks good.

What you need

• A camera that works in Mainsail. Any USB webcam, or Creality's Nebula Camera. If you can see the live picture in Mainsail, timelapse can use it. See Camera.
• Mainsail open in a browser. Everything on this page is done in Mainsail. There is no timelapse control on the printer's own touchscreen.

Before you begin

Timelapse is switched off when NebulaOS is installed. That is deliberate: recording costs storage and, with head parking on, print time. You switch it on once and it stays on.

You do not need to change anything in your slicer. NebulaOS watches the nozzle height and takes the pictures itself - see How the pictures are taken below.

Step-by-step: switch it on

1. Open Mainsail and go to Settings → Timelapse.
2. Turn Enabled on.
3. Leave Mode on the layer setting (the default). The other mode, hyperlapse, takes a picture every so many seconds instead of every layer - useful for a print with very few, very long layers.
4. Decide about park head - the one setting that changes how the video looks. See the next section. It is off when NebulaOS is installed.
5. Start a print as usual.

Expected result

While the print runs, pictures pile up invisibly. When the print finishes, the printer renders them into an MP4 by itself and the video appears in Mainsail's Timelapse list, where you can play it, download it or delete it.

A cancelled print is different, and this one catches people out. Recording stops, but no video is made automatically - only a print that runs to the end renders by itself. The pictures are still there, and they stay there until the next print starts, which clears them. So if you want the film of a print you cancelled, run TIMELAPSE_RENDER from the console (Home → Console) before you start anything else.

Park head: the one setting worth understanding

	Off (how NebulaOS ships)	On
What happens per layer	The picture is taken wherever the nozzle happens to be	The print pauses, the filament is retracted a little, the nozzle moves out of shot, the picture is taken, and printing resumes
The video	The nozzle moves around in frame	The object appears to grow on its own, with nothing else moving
The print	Not affected	Slower, and every pause is a chance for a blob or a string

Neither is wrong. Off is the safe default and still gives a perfectly watchable video; on is what produces the clean "it built itself" look, at a cost to the print.

If you turn park head on, use a tall-ish test print first rather than a part you care about.

How the pictures are taken

Normally, a timelapse needs you to add a line to your slicer's layer-change script. NebulaOS does it for you instead.

A small watcher starts with the print (after the purge line) and stops when the print ends or is cancelled. Once a second it looks at the nozzle height; a height that is higher than the last picture's and has held still for a second counts as a new layer and triggers one picture. A Z-hop does not hold still for a second, so it does not produce a picture, and dropping back down is recognised as the end of a long hop rather than a new layer.

If your slicer already sends TIMELAPSE_TAKE_FRAME, remove that line - otherwise you get two pictures per layer.

From the NebulaOS image: /etc/nebulaos/klipper/camera.cfg (_NEBULAOS_TIMELAPSE), started and stopped by START_PRINT, END_PRINT and CANCEL_PRINT in print.cfg, firmware 70ad0b0.

A power cut does not cost you the video

If the power goes out and you resume the print, the pictures taken before the cut are kept and put back in front of the ones taken after it. The finished video covers the whole print, not just the part after the resume.

Nothing to switch on - it is set up in the shipped configuration.

Storage

Videos live on the printer until you delete them, and they are not removed by Settings → System → Storage → Free up space (Resetting), which only clears NebulaOS's own leftovers. Delete videos you no longer want from Mainsail's Timelapse list.

The half-finished pictures of a print in progress are temporary and are cleared as each new print starts.

Troubleshooting

What happens	What to do
No video after a print	Check Settings → Timelapse → Enabled is on. It is off until you turn it on.
No video, and timelapse is on	The print has to be started with NebulaOS's own START_PRINT for the watcher to run. Printing a file whose start G-code replaces it will not record.
Two pictures per layer, and a jerky video	Your slicer is also sending TIMELAPSE_TAKE_FRAME. Remove it from the slicer's layer-change script.
The nozzle is visible in every frame	That is park head being off. Turn it on if you want it out of shot, and read the table above first.
Blobs or strings since turning park head on	The pause at each layer is doing it. Turn park head off, or raise the retraction a little.
The console says "minimum extruder temperature not reached"	A picture was requested before the nozzle was hot. Harmless.
The video is there but very short	Few layers means few pictures. Hyperlapse mode suits that kind of print better.
A print was cancelled and there is no video	Cancelling does not render. Run TIMELAPSE_RENDER before starting the next print - starting one discards the pictures.

Recovery and reversal

Turning Enabled off in Mainsail stops all recording. Existing videos are untouched; delete them from the Timelapse list when you want the space back.

For advanced users

Timelapse is upstream moonraker-timelapse, shipped unmodified. NebulaOS adds the layer watcher, keeps the frames across a power loss, and changes three defaults when the printer is first set up:

Default	NebulaOS	Upstream
Enabled	off	on
Park head	off	off
Render options	-preset ultrafast	none

The render preset is not a quality preference: the printer has 256 MB of RAM, and the lightest x264 preset is what renders reliably on it. These three are written once, through the same settings interface Mainsail uses, so anything you change afterwards stays changed.

Macros you can run from the console: GET_TIMELAPSE_SETUP prints the current setup, TIMELAPSE_RENDER renders what has been recorded so far, and HYPERLAPSE ACTION=START [CYCLE=<seconds>] / HYPERLAPSE ACTION=STOP drives the other mode by hand (the cycle defaults to 30 seconds).

From firmware 70ad0b0: manifests/dependencies.conf (upstream pinned at c7fff11), /usr/libexec/nebulaos-seed-timelapse, etc/nebulaos/moonraker/nebulaos.conf ([timelapse]), and etc/nebulaos/klipper/camera.cfg.

Related

• Camera - the live picture, and the Nebula Camera's own settings
• Printing - starting and watching a print
• Power-loss recovery - what happens to a recording when the power goes
• Opening Mainsail - reaching Mainsail from your computer or phone