What is a timelapse video, and how is it made?

A timelapse video is a stretch of work seen quickly. The server takes the screenshots that were captured while somebody was clocked in, puts them in order and produces one short video. Nothing new is recorded: the frames are the same captures the Screenshots grid shows.

Three conditions

1. Screen capture is on. The captures are the frames, so nothing is produced without them.
2. Build timelapse videos is on. It sits in the Screen capture card under Workspace settings, Tracking. It can also be switched on for one person through their own tracking settings.
3. At least ten unused captures have piled up. Short or interrupted stretches are skipped, and no video is produced for them.

Timelapse is also a plan capability. It is the Timelapse videos row in the plan comparison on the Subscription screen.

When a video appears

The server looks every ten minutes for people whose last activity record is more than five minutes old, which in practice means they stopped tracking. Their captures are stitched then. So a video turns up a few minutes after a stretch of work ends, not at a fixed hour of the day.

Each capture is used once. A day that was interrupted a few times can produce more than one video, and every card says how many frames went into it.

Watching them

1. Go to Tracking, then Timelapse videos.
2. Narrow by date range, team and employee. There is no project filter and no idle filter here, because the request behind the screen does not carry them.
3. The card shows the first frame as its cover. Press play and the video opens in a window, where the arrows step to the next video of the page.

A card that says the video is still being prepared has no playable address yet; refreshing the list later gives it one. Video addresses are signed and expire, so a video that refuses to open usually only needs the list refreshed.

Who sees them, who deletes them

• Owners and co-owners see the whole organization.
• A manager sees their own team, applied by the server.
• An employee sees their own videos only while Employees can see their own timelapse videos is on. That switch is what puts the screen in their sidebar.
• Videos are deleted one at a time. There is no bulk delete and no bulk download. The confirmation notes that the screenshots the video was built from stay where they are.

When the list is empty and no filter is set, the screen prints the three conditions above and marks the ones it can check. That is the fastest way to find out why nothing has been produced yet.

Reviewing the captures themselves covers the grid the frames come from.