Time-lapse looks valuable in marketing material and is genuinely useful in a small set of project conversations. Confusing those two facts is how teams end up paying for time-lapse on every project and using it on none.
Where time-lapse earns its keep
- Stakeholder reporting where momentum is the message.
- Programme review at quarterly board level, where compression helps.
- Closeout marketing artefacts where the owner has approved use.
- A small set of progress disputes where the compressed view is faster than the full record.
Where it does not
Time-lapse is the wrong tool for any decision that requires a specific clip with metadata. It does not preserve chain of custody for an export. It does not provide the time alignment a delay claim needs. It is a summary artefact; it is not the record.
The right answer is to plan time-lapse where it earns its keep and to invest the rest of the capture budget in records that hold up under closer questioning.
Field notes are part of the public RDI reference. For shorter definitions, use the glossary. For full reference articles, see the knowledge base.