Instagram's bringing stabilized time-lapse video to iPhone with Hyperlapse

August 27, 2014

Instagram's second app is coming, and it's called Hyperlapse. The app combines some really intelligent video stabilization with time lapse techniques. It's not unlike the hyperlapse stabilization demoed by Microsoft earlier this month, except that it's coming as an app for your iPhone. Unlike Instagram, which has long-featured filters as a premiere element of the experience, Hyperlapse's only filters are stabilization and speed.

Hyperlapse uses the motion data from the gyroscopes and accelerometers built into modern iPhones to extract motion data for the stabilization. A traditional stabilization algorithm (like those built into iMovie on the Mac and Final Cut Pro X analyze the video itself, frame-by-frame, watching for the movement of distinct points in the image. This works well, but can be incredibly processor-intensive, and thus draining on a mobile device. But by using the ready-made and hyper-accurate motion data already on the phone, Hyperlapse can achieve the same smooth, stabilized, practically Steadicam look in your video with a fraction of the processing power.

Hyperlapse's interface is hyper simple. Once you record a video, you have just a few choices: How the speed at which you'll be accelerating the video (from 1x to 12x) and whether or not to save or share it (with choices of Facebook and Instagram, naturally). Going at 1x is more like a smooth steady tracking shot, whereas the faster speeds are more like a time lapse (though perhaps not as fast as a traditional time lapse might go).

Instagram's new Hyperlapse app isn't yet live in the App Store, but we're definitely watching for it and will let you know when it's available. In the meantime, what kind of super-stabilized time lapse videos are you going to record?

Update: Instagram has now added the Hyperlapse app to the iTunes App Store.