iTimelapse Pro

iTimelapse is an interesting animal. We weren’t sure whether to categorize it as a video editing or photo editing software. What we DO know is that it does exactly what you would expect a time-lapse application to do, and it makes it pretty easy. You can click a couple buttons, set the camera up, and let it go.

Once you let it go, though, you run into the normal problems. You need a tripod to really use this application to its fullest extent. You could conceivably hold it in your hand and take pictures, but after taking pictures every 3 seconds, I needed at least 5 minutes of capturing before I had enough material to make a 10 second video. Long story short, you can either skip the tripod and wear your arms out, or you can invest in a little tripod and have some nice pictures.

Once you’re done, there aren’t that many options, so it is both simple and frustrating. On the one hand, to render it into a movie is really, really easy. But you also have very little control. You can’t re-order or adjust your pictures in any way. You can designate resolution size and frames per second, but you can’t, for instance, designate a set amount of time and then have it fill that amount evenly with the pictures you’ve taken. They also thoughtfully provided you with a few music tracks to lay over your video, but you better really like the ones they give you, because uploading from iTunes is not a possibility with this application.

After you’ve gotten your video rendered comes the part of the application that absolutely SHINES. You can export to youtube, vimeo, facebook, send it to email, or export to your camera roll. And using only the 3G, I was able to upload a 20 second video to youtube in about 5 minutes. It’s not bad at all.

The only downfall to the application aside from the lack of control you actually have is that you can’t store multiple videos. You can export them, or save them to a camera roll, but if you were hoping to save several time-lapses before doing anything with them, then you’re out of luck. There’s also not a way to use only certain [pictures you’ve taken. Either you use all the pictures you’ve taken in your video, or you delete the ones you don’t want to render. You also can’t upload pictures to the application. So, get what you need and make the video and export it quickly if there are several things in a given time you need to capture.