Frigate Timelapse — HA Add-on

A Home Assistant add-on that generates timelapse videos directly from Frigate NVR recording files on disk.

No Frigate API credentials required — the add-on reads the segment files Frigate has already written to /media/frigate/recordings/.

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Features

• Visual timeline scrubber — browse thumbnails across any day; drag handles to set start/end points; double-click an hour to snap to a 1-hour selection
• Direct time entry — HH:MM inputs below the timeline stay in sync with the handles for precise range selection
• Speed control — 5×, 10×, 25×, 60×, 120×, 300×, 600×, 900×, or 1200×
• Encode quality — Quality (smaller file), Balanced (default), or Speed (fastest render) — chosen per timelapse in the UI
• Output size controls — configurable CRF and maximum output height; defaults to CRF 28 scaled to ≤1080p, keeping files reasonable without visible quality loss
• Parallel rendering — encodes across all available CPU cores for faster renders
• Watermark — optional camera name + timestamp burned into the video in your recording timezone
• HA Media Browser — finished timelapses land in /media/frigate/timelapses/ and appear automatically alongside Frigate's own clips and exports
• Ingress — available as a sidebar panel or via direct port access

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Installation

This is a custom add-on repository.

Easy install — click to add the repository directly to your HA instance:

Manual install:

1. In HA, go to Settings → Add-ons
2. Click Add-on Store (bottom-right button)
3. Click the three-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner and select Repositories
4. Paste https://github.com/paulforrester/frigate-timelapse and click Add
5. Close the dialog — the repository now appears in the store
6. Find Frigate Timelapse, click it, and click Install
7. Configure options (see below) and click Start

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Standalone Docker Deployment

Run Frigate Timelapse as a plain Docker container — no Home Assistant required. Frigate can be running anywhere (bare Docker, another host, etc.) as long as you can mount its recordings directory.

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose installed on the host
• Frigate NVR running with recordings enabled and accessible from this host

Find your Frigate recordings path

Setup	Typical path
Home Assistant OS	/media/frigate/recordings
Some HA configurations	/config/media/frigate/recordings
Bare Docker (Frigate)	Wherever you mapped Frigate's /media/frigate/recordings volume

Steps

1. Get the compose file — either clone the repo or download just the file:

   curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/paulforrester/frigate-timelapse/main/docker-compose.yml

2. Create the output directory (if it doesn't exist yet):

   mkdir -p /path/to/frigate/media/timelapses

3. Edit docker-compose.yml — update the two volume paths and the timezone:

   volumes:
     - /actual/path/to/frigate/recordings:/recordings:ro   # ← your recordings path
     - /actual/path/to/frigate/timelapses:/output:rw       # ← where timelapses are saved
   environment:
     - TZ=America/Los_Angeles   # ← your camera timezone (IANA name)

4. Start the container:

   docker compose up -d

5. Open the UI at http://<host-ip>:8088

Updating

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

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Configuration

Option	Default	Description
timezone	America/Los_Angeles	IANA timezone of the camera location — used for watermarks and the date picker
port	8088	Host port for direct browser access
timelapse_retention_days	7	Days to keep finished timelapse files before automatic deletion
verbose_logging	false	Log index build/scan progress at 30-second intervals
output_crf	28	libx264 quality (18 = near-lossless, 28 = good, 35 = small). Lower = larger file
output_max_height	1080	Scale down output if source is taller than this. Set to 0 to disable

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How it works

Frigate writes H.264 MP4 segments to:

/media/frigate/recordings/{YYYY-MM-DD}/{HH}/{camera}/{MM}.{SS}.mp4

On startup the add-on indexes the entire recordings tree and caches it in memory (persisted to /data/ so subsequent restarts are fast). The UI loads immediately from the cache; the index updates in the background and live as new segments arrive.

When you click Build Timelapse, the add-on:

1. Finds all segments for the selected camera and time range
2. Splits the segment list across CPU cores and encodes each chunk in parallel
3. Stream-copies the encoded chunks into a single output MP4
4. Saves to /media/frigate/timelapses/ and makes it available for download

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Accessing the UI

• Sidebar: click Timelapse after enabling ingress in the add-on settings
• Direct: http://<ha-host>:8088

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Requirements

• Home Assistant OS or Supervised
• Frigate NVR add-on with recordings enabled
• Recordings stored at the standard path (/media/frigate/recordings/)