Image Sequence to Time-Lapse Video: Complete FFmpeg Guide

A folder full of JPEG photos is just storage until you turn it into a time-lapse video. Whether you shot 3,000 frames of a sunset, captured a plant growing over 90 days, or photographed a construction project from the same angle every morning, the process of assembling those images into a watchable video is fundamentally the same: tell FFmpeg how fast to move through the frames, pick a codec, and let it run.

This guide covers everything from the first FFmpeg command to advanced techniques for reducing flicker, handling variable exposure sequences, and outputting for different platforms.

Naming Your Photo Sequence Correctly

FFmpeg reads image sequences by file naming pattern. The most important thing to get right before running any command is consistent, zero-padded numbering.

Good naming:

frame_0001.jpg
frame_0002.jpg
frame_0003.jpg
...
frame_3847.jpg

Bad naming:

IMG_20240315.jpg
photo_final_v2.jpg
DSC00123.jpg

If your photos came off a camera with non-sequential names, rename them first. On Linux/Mac:

ls -t *.jpg | cat -n | while read n f; do
  mv -n "$f" "$(printf 'frame_%04d.jpg' $n)"
done

On Windows (PowerShell):

$i = 1
Get-ChildItem *.jpg | Sort-Object Name | ForEach-Object {
    Rename-Item $_ "frame_$('{0:D4}' -f $i).jpg"
    $i++
}