It might not have made our list of the five best new features on iOS 8, but time-lapse is definitely a fun addition to the Camera app on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. If you haven’t had a chance to try out time-lapse yet, it allows you to condense a video of any length to a bite-sized time-lapse video which speeds through the footage in seconds. All you have to do is press record.
As Apple notes on its website, “iOS 8 does all the work, snapping photos at dynamically selected intervals.” Dan Provost of Studio Neat figured that Apple must have employed some advanced methodology in order to produce a smooth, high-quality video without requiring any input from the user. After running a few tests, Provost discovered something surprising — Apple’s technique isn’t complicated at all.
“What Apple means by ‘dynamically selected intervals’ is they are doubling the speed of the time-lapse and taking half as many pictures per second as the recording duration doubles,” he writes. “Sounds complex, but it’s actually very simple.”
In other words, in a 5 minute recording, the iOS 8 Camera captures 2 frames every second, which results in a relative speed 15x faster than real time. A video between 10 and 20 minutes will be captured at 1 FPS at a 30x relative speed. These rates keep increasing as the length of the video increases.
Provost recorded a 5-minute video and a 40-minute video in order to demonstrate the difference between the two:
5 Minutes
40 Minutes
Apple’s first-party time-lapse might not be as feature-rich as many of the apps on the App Store, but its simplicity is its most appealing trait. Try it out if you haven’t yet and see if your videos turn out as well as Provost’s.
