Instagram has launched Hyperlapse, a super-quick and easy way to make timelapse videos with your phone. It’s an exemplar of simplicity, allowing even the shakiest of individuals access to smoothed out video in a flash.
Apps don’t come much more minimal than this. There are literally only two screens making up the entire experience. The first is your camera view, with nothing but a big record button in the centre. Press it and off you go on your video journey.
The entire user interface of Hyperlapse.
The screen will tell you how much time you’ve recorded, and the idea is to record long stretches of video, much more than you normally would to show your friends. You can record an entire sunset if you want, provided you have enough storage space on your phone.
When you finish the recording, Hyperlapse brings you to another super simple interface which lets you select your video’s playback speed. You can ramp it up all the way to 12x it’s original speed. The flexibility in this department is essential to the experience, because every type of recording merits a different playback speed to really make it sing. It’s just like selecting a filter in Instagram — it depends on your own sensibility.
From there it’s simply a matter of either saving your Hyperlapse to your camera roll or sending it right on over to Facebook or Instagram, where you can add filters and give it the ol’ square format treatment. That is entirely it! The resulting videos are very low resolution, like, really only suitable for viewing on your phone. But that’s the point. Apps like this are about the share-ability, not the image quality.
No sound is recorded, which makes sense, but it would be nice to have the option to add a soundtrack. For that you’ll have to import your video into a separate app. There are also no filters built into Hyperlapse; you can send your video to Instagram to gussy it up though.
Hyperlapse is simple, but it does have the potential to spur creativity in interesting ways, much like how Vine did after its release. Experimentation will occur that will stretch the limits of what a Hyperlapse video can be. But even in its most basic form, the app provides what amateur video desperately needs, an effortless way to make things look good. It feels great to not have to worry about holding your camera absolutely still, and will definitely make video recording feel cooler and easier to handle.
Hyperlapse is available from the iTunes App Store.