I received a ton of questions about how to do this. Here’s what we did:
I mounted a small GoPro Hero HD camera to the upper middle of the windshield. The “automotive” version of the camera that I bought comes with a suction cup mount. While the suction cup didn’t budge the entire trip I tied a safety string to it just in case it came off at 65 mph and hit someone. The other end of the string came in through the moonroof . I ALWAYS tether any piece of gear that rides on the outside of a car. I used a 16 gig class 10 SD memory card to capture full 1080p. The lens isn’t bad, it’s size shows it’s limitations on a big screen but for a tiny camera it still produces pretty cool HD. When I arrived in East Hampton I popped the memory card into an Apple Macbook Pro and ingested the large video file. I then wiped the card for recording the return trip that night. Recording the return trip was successful as well but I didn’t end up using it. A lot of the trip on the East end of the Island is thru rural areas with few dramatic lights so half of the night recording isn’t that interesting. Besides I have plans for another night video in the future.

Why shoot continuous video and not just fire off a frame every few seconds? Well, I have done that in the past but this new camera offered the chance to try continuous shooting at 30 or 60 fps and you can’t beat the smoothness when sped up. 30 or 60 fps is always going to look smoother than 2 fps.

The video was transferred back at the house to one of our Mac Pro editing computers with Final Cut Pro. It was ingested in full 1080 and color and contrast corrected. At about 2:31 you can see the contrast change when dust or water from another car sprayed on the camera. The video becomes less contrasty for a while. Next the speed was adjusted in segments. The video as shown begins in real-time when leaving the parking lot of the bagel cafe. Once on the street I applied a gradual ramping up to about 750% speed. Then it gradually transitions to about 2000% speed and finally 3000% for the highway portion. The final 15 seconds slows down to 750% speed from the traffic light to the parking space. Titles and locations were added. The right music is crucial to a good time-lapse and I’ve always wanted to use this cut.

This REMIX is in my opinion a better version than the original in the previous post because it’s a minute shorter. I achieved this by speeding up the first 1/4 of the video a little more so the viewer gets right into the speed effect without the longer, more gradual ramp up. I also added 3 clips of an animated route map showing where the car was at those points. That was done in Road Trip Effect Pro, and then flown into Final Cut to mix into the finished video.