Time-lapse
Also known as: timelapse, time lapse video, hyperlapse
Time-lapse captures frames at long intervals and plays them back quickly, compressing minutes or hours into a short clip. Because it keeps only selected frames, a finished time-lapse is usually compact for the span of time it covers.
- Captures frames at intervals, then plays them fast
- Compresses long spans into a short, compact clip
- Far smaller than continuous video of the same event
How time-lapse works
Instead of recording every frame, time-lapse takes a photo every few seconds and stitches them into a sped-up video. A sunset that lasts half an hour becomes a smooth clip a few seconds long.
On iPhone, Time-Lapse sits in the Camera app beside Slow-Mo and Video. The camera automatically adjusts how often it captures based on how long you record, so the final clip stays short.
Why it matters for storage
Time-lapse is the opposite of slow motion for storage. By discarding most frames and keeping only periodic ones, it produces a short final video, so a long recording session results in a relatively small file.
That makes time-lapse an efficient way to document long events without filling storage the way continuous high-resolution video would. The trade-off is that you cannot recover the moments between the captured frames.