Searching for the impossible

[handrawn]

you ought to be able to set your webcam up to do this

but thinking about it, if you just let the webcam run, ideally with the video datestamped, it would illustrate the problem from start to finish so to speak, would it not ? of course the council would have to watch it - you could watch it afterwards and manually note the times to save them time watching it all

even if it is not date stamped it's a start as long as the location is clearly identifiable which it must be anyway; a video diary with notes is as good as a written one here if not better ?

be good if some of your neighbours could do same...

[Lynnzer]

That's the sort of thing I'm going to do, but manually searching through 10 hours of footage for5 every night's recording is going to be - well- 10 ours of daytime work. Too make things easier, I need to have a programme that detects sudden incursions of light then marks the video or clips it at5 that point.
I'm working with Movavi right now and I think I may have it sorted somewhat.
The original video recording didn't see any scene changes to mark, however I've messed around with the image settings, ie brightness, contrast etc, and some scenes where thye light kicks in are now found and marked.
I'll do a bit more on that and see what comes of it.
Thanks for the comments

[handrawn]

I don't know movavi... if you have the right software you should be able to vary playback speed to make the task shorter, provided it has a reasonably accurate pause function; I am not convinced you need pinpoint accuracy in timing, more the frequency of the problem and it's times of day, and it's approx lengths, but I guess that is up to your council; ask yourself the question if you sat up with a notebook and a still camera how definitive is that and that is your benchmark

sory i cannot be more helpful, you have my sympathy, bad neighbours can be a curse