DSLR video shooting in image sequences?

Is it possible to shoot images in sequence rather than shooting in movie mode? Because movie acquires a lot of space if full HD and I face problems transferring it to pc. Whereas if I have sequences, they can easily be transferred and later imported to my editing software as a footage. I also get better resolution to deal with too. But can a camera be programmed to auto shoot image sequences at the manual settings without me having to press shutter release button everytime? Is that possible? Is there any in built camera feature that can do that (in general) or I need some external device? (I saw a video on creative cow where they talked about shooting image sequences for a time lapse in raw or jpeg fine. Till then I didn't know that a video can be shot in an image sequence too in the camera. Lastly, if shooting in sequence is possible, how do I time it in the camera as in shoot every 1 second, 5 seconds and so on.

I'm going to shoot time lapse. It's my 1st time. The last time I shot it in HD video mode, it was over 2gb and played fine on camera but I just wasn't able to transfer it to the pc even through the nikon software or direct copy-pasting. So I want to know if I can shoot the footage in sequence, it would be awesome!

I use DSLR Nikon D5100.

A detailed answer would be extremely helpful. And if possible, steps too. All answers would be really appreciated. Thank you.

Added (1). Thank you sir, I meant to ask that how can I shoot sequences of images at regular intervals so that later I could compile them as a footage in my editing software. I have tried HD video mode but am unable to transfer the huge file size. So I thought I could shoot images in sequential order and later import them as a footage and render. If I shoot images, I have better 16 MP resolution to deal with rather than 1080HD which is a mere 2.1 MP. I hope you are getting me. Any help on how can I shoot images in sequence?

To the 1st poster, thank you as well. But I'm planning to shoot time lapse of clouds so I think 2 images a second could also do. I would like to know from where you found the details about my cameras capacity to click 4 images a second and buffering capacity. Exactly, is it a limitation that my camera can click 4 images a second? Could you explain what you meant in a little detail? Sorry, I'm new to this.

What your thinking of is called a intervalometer, it plugs into your remote jack and takes pictures in succession for as long as you set it to. Seeing as your camera can take 4 pictures a second at best and exuding the buffer size, there's really no way your gonna be able to record video unless your camera is in movie mode… Get a better computer instead or just deal with a lower video quality.sorry

As a graduate from film school and a working still photographer, your question is a little difficult to understand exactly what you are asking.

Shooting a film or video is usually done using a shooting script that is developed from the original script. This is rarely done in sequence. The key is to only use the set one time and shoot all the scenes around that set and then move on to the next scene.

The resulting footage is then later used using an editing script provided to the video editor.

This is the way you would compile a video shot in HD video.

Sequential photography (a series of single images shot in a sequence and a predetermined frequency) is usually shot at the cameras highest image resolution or in RAW. This is a much higher resolution than an HD video (720p - 1 mp) or Full HD video (1080p - 2 mp) since most dSLR cameras have sensors that are at least 10 mp, usually closer to 12 mp and in your case, 16 mp. As you can see, the image quality is much higher than ANY video option

Whether your D5100 has a menu driven sequential feature is something you will have to determine by reading your user manual