Time-lapse videos are beautiful. Instagram makes it possible for anyone to create masterful time lapse videos of their own with the help of Hyperlapse.
Announced by Instagram in a blog post Tuesday, Hyperlapse is essentially a standalone app for creating time-lapse videos. It takes advantage of stabilization technology that lets users "create moving, handheld time lapses that result in a cinematic look, quality and feel."
To create a time-lapse video, thousands of dollars worth of equipment would have to be used. And even then, camera equipment would have to set in a stable spot before a time-lapse video can be captured. That's certainly not possible with a smartphone, most especially from someone with shaky hands. Hyperlapse changes all that. For starters, it's free. Thanks to stabilization technology, it automatically fixes bumps and shakes for a video capture so smooth no one would believe it was taken with a smartphone.
But why a standalone app?
Instagram didn't want to create something useful and just tuck it away where everyday users might not be able to find it and power users may consider it tedious. Since Hyperlapse is a standalone app, it is available for everyone to use immediately, even those who don't have Instagram accounts.
Designed to be as simple as possible, Hyperlapse launches with the camera. Tap it and it starts recording. Tap it again and it stops. During a recording, two timers will be present: one for how the video is and another for how long the video will be after being compressed using the default 6x playback rate.
Users can set the playback speed, of course. Just take note that the longer the original video capture was, the higher the playback speed should be to create a shorter time-lapse video. For sharing on Instagram, remember that the platform has a 15-second limit for videos.
At the default 6x speed, it's possible to record up to 90 seconds of footage. If the fastest playback speed of 12x is chosen, up to three minutes of video may be recorded. There's no limit, however, to the number of time-lapse videos that can be made using Hyperlapse. Only a device's storage capacity will dictate how many videos a user can create using the app.
At the moment, Hyperlapse is only available on iOS devices. Instagram hopes to be able to develop a version for Android as well but proper APIs are not available yet to the company.
