The app is now Live for iOS and Android, and takes on Vine's short video feature.
Facebook has given Instagram its biggest update, since acquiring the popular photo sharing in August 2012. The Video on Instagram update now allows for 15 seconds of video clips to be shared on the platform. This new feature is available on the Instagram versions for iOS and Android devices. Apart from the 15-second video recording and share feature, Facebook has pretty much taken on the Twitter’s Vine app head on, and also adding the filter feature to the videos. Instagram with Video gets 13 new custom filters that can be applied on the 3-second-minimum videos.
“Today, we’re thrilled to introduce Video on Instagram and bring you another way to share your stories. When you go to take a photo on Instagram, you’ll now see a movie camera icon. Tap it to enter video mode, where you can take up to fifteen seconds of video through the Instagram camera. What we did to photos, we just did to video,” announced Instagram co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom. “It’s everything we know and love about Instagram, but it moves.”
Apart from the filters that can be applied to videos, there is also a custom cover frame that users can select as the preview image. This is the image that others see on their timeline, before watching the video. The video stabilization feature is active by default on the Apple iPhone 4S and the Apple iPhone 5, but can be manually turned off on the page when users will apply the filters.
The moment the update went live on the Apple App Store, we downloaded it and took it for a spin. Here are some observations.
•The interface of the app is exactly the same as earlier, and at first glance, you really wouldn’t know the difference. The timeline opens as is, and the tabs at the bottom of the screen are exactly as earlier.
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•The first indications of any difference are on the Capture screen. Earlier, there were the photo camera and the gallery icons, but now, there is the additional video camera option.
•Tap on the video camera and you get to the screen that lets you record a video, a maximum of 15-seconds at a time, and a minimum of 3 seconds. To record, you need to keep the on-screen video camera key pressed, and the moment you leave it, that is where the recording stops.
•The moment the recording is finished, you are taken to the screen where you put filters, just like you would on a still image all this while.
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•On the Apple iPhone 4S and the Apple iPhone 5, the Image Stabilization feature is automatically activated. The option to turn it off is available on this screen, and moment you tap to turn it off, you see a preview of the video of how it would now look.
•You can also set a cover for the video, something like an image that stands out in those 15 seconds. That is the image that will show up on the video on your friends’ timelines, before they actually tap on it and view the video.
•The sharing page is exactly as on the older versions, allowing you to put a caption, set up sharing on Facebook, Twitter etc. and also Geo-tag the video to the Photo Map.
The Instagram update is free for all Instagram users on iOS and Android devices, and is now available for download from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store respectively.
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News Source: Instagram