Have you seen Instagram’s new Hyperlapse app? You may have seen us Tweet a video giving you a very rough guided tour of our studio. Over the last couple of days we’ve had time to play around with it a bit more, it’s pretty damn cool.
Hyperlapse is Instagram’s first standalone video app. User’s are able to create elegant, high-quality time-lapse videos, anywhere at anytime. What sets Hyperlapse apart from other time-lapse video recording apps is its image stabilising feature. Most time-lapse videos rely on users keeping there hand/body steady to create a consistent shot without any camera shake, anyone you has ever used the Panorama camera on an iPhone will know the struggle against representing your own sitting room as a warped, parallel universe.
(Via Distractify)
How does Hyperlapse work? Instagram wanted to create a time-lapse video app that removed all of the complexity and meticulous planning and editing that goes with producing a professional time-lapse video. After all, who has the software, time or the know-how to do so.
Using Hyperlapse is as simple as tapping the record button on the app, and it does the rest for you. It takes your recording and uses a complex, under the hood, decoding system to request certain frames and speeds up the video to a new playback rate. There are 7 playback rates depending on how fast you want your time-lapse video to be; 1x, 2x, 4x, 6x, 8x, 10x and 12x. If your original recording is 60 seconds long and you choose a 2x playback rate, your resulting time-lapse video will be 2 times as fast as the original, 30 seconds long and so on.
Whilst the app is recording and processing your capture its clever image stabilising algorithm, Cinema, is working in the background to help to give the recording a fluid motion with minimal camera shake. It’s the image stabilising feature that sets Hyperlapse apart from the rest in its genre. The app’s flexible zoom algorithm reduces the field of view depending on how shaky your video is to smooth out the folds and provide a much steadier, smoother outcome. Its best feature might not be so apparent at first, the app really starts to flex its muscles when the user and subject are both in motion allowing the image stabilising feature to really come into play.
Overall, the app is great. Its interface is so uncomplicated a child could use it and it’s beautiful in all of its simplicity. Some pre-consideration may be need to go into what you want to do with your finished piece, for example, the video length limit on Instagram is 15 seconds and 7 seconds on Vine, so if you plan to share them on your favourite social networks you’ll need an idea of the time parameters to stay within. Hyperlapse haven’t left you on your own with this though. Two timers give you real-time feedback whilst you record, one tells you the length of the recording and one indicates how long the resulting time-lapse version will be at the default playback rate, 6x.
Hyperlapse is clever, fun and most importantly free so it’s worth a download just to have a go. Take a look at some of the creative capabilities some of the clever folk of the internet have already started sharing.
