The iPhone time lapse feature was first introduced in iOS 8 (2014) as one of the two new features in the Camera app. Since then, Apple made it easier than ever for people to record and share their own timelapse videos. But what are exactly those? Show
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What is the time lapse on iPhone?The time lapse is a feature on the iPhone camera app that allows you to record a very short video (usually only 30-40 seconds long) that can compress hours or even days of recording. This makes the final video appear as if it has been sped up. How to make a time lapse video on iPhone?To make a time lapse video on iPhone, just open your Camera app, scroll left on the camera mode selection wheel until “Time-Lapse” is selected and start recording! The camera will now take a shot every few seconds and at the end it will stitch them all up together into a time-lapse video in your iPhone camera roll. This is how to do a time lapse on iPhoneAnd that’s it! If you were wondering how to use the time lapse on iPhone, that was it, there’s no more steps! Right after tapping the stop button, the timelapse video should appear directly on your gallery – maybe allow it some seconds to process it if had been recording for a lot of time, but it should take a very short time. Now you know how to time-lapse on iPhone! Tips to take time-lapses on iPhone like a professionalAnyone can take iPhone time-lapses, but if you’re aiming for tip-top quality, follow these tips!
About the iPhone time lapse speedThe time-lapse feature on the iPhone camera does not behave in the way a typical time-lapse recording software does, because it automatically optimizes the settings of every timelapse to end up yielding a video between 20 and 40 seconds. For this reason, it’s not easy to know how much time has really been recorded just seeing the final time-lapse video. If you’re really interested in knowing how does the iPhone time-lapse work, make sure to check out our iPhone time-lapse calculator, where we also go into great depth and detail about how it works! iPhone time lapse settingsUnfortunately for us creators, there’s no easy way of adjusting the settings on the iPhone time lapse camera mode, so we’re stuck with Apple’s defaults. This means the preferences that define the time-lapse feature on the iPhone camera, like the interval capture rate speed, the final video FPS and all that are hardcoded into the app and cannot be changed. There’s more info about this in our iPhone time-lapse calculator. How to slow down a time lapse on iPhone?One of the most common questions regarding this feature is related to the timelapse video speed. Can you slow down a time lapse on iPhone? Well, the short answer is: yes, but not from the Camera. As we’ve discussed earlier, we’re stuck with Apple’s defaults, that is, the iPhone time-lapse preferences are hardcoded and cannot be changed in the device or the app. So we can’t modify critical parameters like the timelapse capture rate / interval (how many shots does it take in a second) or the final video FPS (Frames Per Second, which also defines the speed at which the resulting video will be played back) However, there are a couple of ways around this. So if you’re really willing to learn how to change the time lapse speed on iPhone, keep reading! There’s no way of slowing down the time lapse on iPhone while recording, but what you could do is you could record your time-lapse as normal and then import it into a video editing app, like the iMovie app, and manually slow it down! This is fairly easy to do. First, get the iMovie app from the App Store if you haven’t already. Open the iMove app and get ready to slow down your time-lapse video! Time needed: 5 minutes. How to slow down a time-lapse on iPhone using the iMovie app
How do you speed up a time lapse on iPhone?Just like it happened when we were discussing about how to slow down a time lapse on iPhone, there’s no immediate way of speeding up a time lapse. But you can definitely do it! First, record your timelapse on the iPhone as usual and then import the video into a video editing software like the iMovie app on iPhone to manually speed it up. There’s detailed steps on the how to slow down a time lapse on iPhone section, just follow the guide but instead of adjusting the video to be slowed down, use it to increase it speed! How long can a time lapse video on iPhone be?Many people wonder how long can an iPhone record a time lapse – and the answer is rather simple: you can record for as long as you want (or rather, for as long as the free space on your device –and the battery– can keep up). First thing you want to do is connect your iPhone to a power outlet if you’re going to record for longer than 30 minutes. The battery on your device will drain quickly while recording a time-lapse. Next, if you plan to record for several hours, better clean up storage on your iPhone to make some room for the time-lapse files and make sure you won’t run out of space in the middle of your precious timelapse. A great idea is to start deleting unused apps, which make a huge chunk of the iPhone’s used space. Then, you could upload all your big videos and files to iCloud or Google Photos and remove them from the device, or you could also physically connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC using a lightning cable and manually transfer all your files there using Photos, iTunes or any iPhone management software. One trick we like is the following (it only works on macOS):
Once your files are safely copied into your computer, you could remove them from your iPhone, which will make a lot of extra free space for you to use when recording long time-lapse videos. In summary, iPhones basically can timelapse for as much as there is available storage space and battery. If you only have a couple of MBs left, that will be a very short time (maybe a few minutes) – but if you have GBs and GBs of available space, your iPhone could record for hours and hours, even a day or two. Just make sure you do some testing with the actual intended length before going out in the field to record a critical and important long time-lapse, to avoid losing it because the device ran out of space. How to add music to a time lapse on iPhone?Adding music to a time-lapse on iPhone can be easily done with the iMovie app! To do this, first you’re going to need iMovie, so go to the App Store, search for “iMovie” and download it if you don’t have it already in your iPhone! Open it and:
How to convert a time lapse video to normal on iPhoneA time-lapse video recorded on iPhone cannot be easily converted into a normal video just like that. This is because of the way the iPhone creates the time-lapse video: it doesn’t first record a full-length video that then it speeds up. Instead, it takes a bunch of still shots that then get stitched together into a time-lapse video. But you can definitely use the iMovie app to slow down a time-lapse video on iPhone as we mentioned earlier, but if you end up slowing it down too much, it will look unnatural, because at the end of the day your time-lapse video is made out of still images, not video. How to convert video to time lapse on iPhoneThis is an easy one! Just as we did when we were talking about how to speed up an iPhone time lapse video, you could use the exact same method to take a normal video, import it into the iMovie app, speed it up and end up with a video that looks just like a time-lapse! There’s a step-by-step tutorial on the section about how to slow down a timelapse on iPhone. How to create time lapse video from photos on iPhoneAs far as we know, there’s no easy way to do this on iPhone just yet, but if you come across some way of achieving the task of creating a time-lapse from still photos on iPhone, please leave a comment below! How do you change timeHow to change the speed of a time-lapse video on iPhone. Download the Lapse It app and open it on your iPhone.. Tap import at the top of the screen and give the app permission to access your photos.. Tap the videos and/or photos you want to edit. ... . Use the minute and second indicator to set the time frame for your video.. How do you speed up a video on iPhone?Go to a video. Tap the video once, then tap More . Tap Playback Speed. Select the speed at which you'd like the video to play.
How fast is Timelapse on iPhone?The iPhone's time lapse camera will condense to about 20-40 seconds regardless of how long you took video. If you record for less than 10 minutes then the frame capture is 2fps, after 10 minutes it reduces to 1fps, and reduces further at 40 minutes, 80 minutes, and so on.
How can I speed up a video on my iPhone more than 2X?If you want to make your iPhone video play faster or slower than the original speed, you can use VideoProc Vlogger to edit the iPhone video playback speed up to 32X. It is a fresh new desktop app that is flexible to adjust video speed like 0.1X, 0.25X, 0.5X, 2X, 4X, 8X, 16X, and 32X.
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