Two days ago Instagram launched a new app for iPhone called Hyperlapse. It’s a free application that opens up new frontiers in creating professional standard video content with just a phone.

With the huge growth in content marketing and an exploding demand for short engaging videos, apps like this will play a vital role. The app instantly topped the download charts and with good reason.

Hyperlapse is a video format similar to time-lapse photography but the position of the camera moves. In the past it has mainly been achieved with painstaking use of still images. It’s a very time consuming process requiring expensive equipment – 10 seconds of film requiring 300 separate precisely planned camera positions.  The alternative would be to use a Steadicam or a £10,000 tracking rig.

Hyperlapse from Instagram lets you shoot in real time and uses stabilization technology to process the images into a professional looking timelapse video. Yesterday we road tested the app around MediaCityUK.  The clips took about 40 minutes to shoot (that was mainly walking time).  They were edited together on the phone in about 10 minutes using the Splice app (£2.49). We topped and tailed the video and added some music using Windows Live Movie Maker (free).