Microsoft has announced the release of Hyperlapse on Android, Windows, and Windows Phone. Originally shown off by Microsoft Research last August, the app takes your shaky, non-stabilized footage -- from a bumpy bicycle ride or your ski adventures -- and processes them into shorter and smoother time lapses that your family and friends might actually enjoy watching.
The app shares its name with Instagram’s own Hyperlapse app, which does something similar with your videos, but Microsoft does a few things differently.
The company says it uses an algorithm that first creates an approximate 3D model of the landscape being filmed, and identifies the dominant path that the camera took through that landscape. It then stitches together different frames to create a smooth and stable hyperlapse that showcases the essence of the original video. The technology can also detect and skip over video frames where not much is happening, such as a red light or stopping for a water break.
Aside from picking the frames that have the most overlap with each other, Microsoft't technology can also reconstruct the outer portion of stabilized video frames from other frames in the video, rather than simply realigning each frame and cropping out the outer edges of the video.
You can create hyperlapse videos from existing clips, and set the playback speed from 1x to 32x on mobile and 2x to 25x on desktops.
One important caveat: Microsoft Hyperlapse requires detailed profile information about the camera being used. This means for now it only supports a handful specific smartphones (detailed here) and a range of GoPro cameras.
The mobile version of the app on Android and Windows Phone will be available for free (nor word on an iOS app), while the more powerful Hyperlapse Pro for Windows will be commercially available for a yet unannounced price -- though it's available as a free preview with certain limitations. Microsoft is also making the technology available through its Azure cloud-computing service.
