Last week we looked at Photosphere from Google, the app that lets you take impressive, endless panorama spheres around you. This week we’re going to take a look at Hyperlapse – the latest release from Instagram to make taking motion video a far easier process. Instagram introduced video to their app about a year ago and, despite my initial worries about the new feature, it’s become a really interesting tool for people to get creative. Here’s a quick look through all the features of their new, separate, application.
The first thing worth noting about Hyperlapse is the UI – there isn’t really one to speak of. This seems to be a growing trend recently, especially with camera and mapping applications, where the main focus of the app is now the camera screen or the map. It’s likely that for all of these types of application we’ll soon see the complete removal of tab and button menus, with apps being controlled solely from gesture based commands.
To take a video with Hyperlapse, you simply tap the record button at the bottom of the screen and it’ll start recording – no holding down required. Unlike Instagram, there’s no limit to the amount of time you can record for, just tap the record button once you’re done. You’ll then get the chance to look back through your video, and either slow it down or speed it up. You slow it down by half or speed it up to 12x in incremental amounts, creating some quite snazzy looking motion video.
Probably the most impressive thing about Hyperlapse though is its motion stabiliser. It’s quite complicated to explain, but the camera zooms in slightly, eliminating much of the motion blur you get when trying to record while walking, cycling or while on a train. To see the official blog from Instagram about Hyperlapse and how it works, click here.
Once you’ve made your video, it will save to your phone’s memory and you can either share it to Facebook or Instagram. Hyperlapse is only for creating video though, it’s not for viewing anything. If you want to look at other peoples Hyperlapses you’ll need to search on Instagram itself for #hyperlapse, which is a little frustrating but does make sense.
Hyperlapse, just like Instagram, is a free to download and use app and available from the App Store now.
Tradebox Media are an award-winning software development agency based in Cardiff, UK.