GOOGLE MOTION STILLS FIXES IPHONE LIVE PHOTOS

Apple’s ‘Live Photos’, which were introduced alongside the iPhone 6S, were intended to create gif-life videos by capturing the moments before and after a photo was taken. However, Live Photos had hit and miss results for users, with some complaining of jerkiness and the inability to share their creations.

Google’s Motion Stills aims to solve these problems by turning Live Photos into looping gifs and videos that can then be shared to social media. The app produces cinematic looking gifs and videos, identifying optimal start and end points and even allowing the combination of multiple clips that can be edited offline with a simplistic interface and exported in different file sizes.

Further, Motion Stills stabilises and renders shaky or blurry footage, using “linear programming to compute a virtual camera path that is optimised to recast videos and bursts as if they were filmed using stabilisation equipment, yielding a still background or creating cinematic pans to remove shakiness.”

Google has stated that they pioneered the technology through their stabilisation work on YouTube videos as well as through Google Photo’s ability to create gifs from photo bursts. However Motion Stills is a standalone app that currently doesn’t require other Google apps to function, despite the company planning to integrate the feature into their existing products.

As there are no native Android features quite like Live Photos, it’s unlikely the app will be rolled out on the platform, leaving Motion Stills an iOS exclusive that’s most valuable to owners of an iPhone 6S, 6S+ or iPhone SE.