Everyone uses their smartphone or tablet to take pictures. Living in one of Manhattan’s largest tourist areas, that is pretty much all I see every day. I find it amazing that there are not more accidents from the amount of the people that are walking around having either a smartphone or tablet directly in front of their faces.
In about 30 seconds, all of these photos are most likely being posted on social media. Most of these photos are posted using Instagram, an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, and share them on a variety of social networking platforms.
As you are walking down the street taking videos on your conveniently accessible smartphone, has the thought every gone through your head that you wish you could take high quality, time lapse videos like you see in the movies? You could have your entire day’s activities displayed in under a minute. I’m sure one of the first thoughts is that your videos are always jittery due to the fact that you are walking and the smartphone moves with your gait.
It appears that Instagram has a solution for you in the form of a new app. Yesterday, Facebook’s photo social network, Instagram, has launched a new app called Hyperlapse. This app can be used to easily create time lapse videos using Instagram’s technology and the mobile device’s camera app.
Currently the app will only work with Apple’s iOS however Instagram does expect to have an Android version ready soon. One of the features of the Hyperlapse is that it uses Instagram’s stabilization technology. This was built through the acquisition of Luma in August 2013. The original Luma app gave users the ability to edit the stabilization, brightness, contrast and saturation of videos recorded on mobile devices.
For those who are not familiar with time lapse photography, it is a technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured, known as the frame rate, is much lower than that used to view the sequence of images. When this is played back at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster creating the effect of lapsing.
If you are familiar with a lot of the wildlife shows on TV, or possibly one of those hunting for monster shows, you will recognize time lapse photography. Generally, this is only accomplished using a camera in a stable position that does not move and takes an image at designated intervals. What sets Hyperlapse apart is the fact that Luma’s stabilization technology allows you to walk while recording up to a total of 45 minutes per individual video through the app.
Once you complete your video, the app has a slider to control how fast the video will play giving you options that range from the standard 1x speed to as fast as 12x. You have the option as to whether or not you want to keep the video that you created. Once you have finalized the video, it is saved to the camera roll. The Hyperlapse app has an option to share the video on Facebook and Instagram once it is saved.
WIRED described this as having a $15,000 video setup in your hand. In an official blog post, Instagram said, "Traditionally, time-lapse videos depend on holding your phone or camera still while you film. Hyperlapse from Instagram features built-in stabilization technology that lets you create moving, handheld time lapses that result in a cinematic look, quality and feel — a feat that has previously only been possible with expensive equipment."
Last month, Instagram launched a short-lived Snapchat-like photo sharing app called Bolt. The Bolt app is currently only available in Singapore, South Africa and New Zealand for both the iOS and Android platforms. Essentially, this makes Hyperlapse the second standalone app from Instagram.
Hyperlapse does not require that you have a username or password. If you want to set up one-touch sharing you can log in to Hyperlapse using Instagram credentials, but it is not required. Unfortunately, if you thought about going back and jazzing up your old video, alas you cannot do that. You cannot use the app to add the time lapse effect to existing videos.
While you are using Hyperlapse to shoot your video, sound is not recorded, there is the possibility that Instagram will add some sort of option that will allow you to place background music once you have saved your time lapsed video.
Currently, Hyperlapse is available as a free download from the Apple App Store. It is only available for Apple devices that are running iOS 7.0 or higher. Instagram has not mentioned when it plans to launch an Android version. One setback is that Google will need to make some adjustments to the camera and gyroscope APIs in order to make the Hyperlapse app work on Android devices.
Edited by
Maurice Nagle 
QUICK LINKS 
