When I first went skiing beneath the trees with my Gopro fixed on my helmet, I was pretty concerned that all the exaltation I was getting from my run would not be visible through the recorded video. And indeed, my initial perceptions of tremendous speed, sharp lines and bold shortcuts were somehow hard to retrieve in the not-so-stable noisy video. Clearly, a lot of editing would have been needed to make my run looks like one of Candide Thovex (and maybe some after-effects too…).

Yet, for those who want to impress friends and family and may not have the skills of a pro rider, filming cool sequences – good focus, no down-time – without editing may not be as easy as it appear. Microsoft proposes a very nice solution for this specific issue. The process called HyperLapse, extends the concept of video speedup (Time-lapse) and stabilization. Such an approach is already existing in Instagram (making a clever use of the device’s Gyroscope), but is here largely improved: some of the results are depicted on the video below.

If there is no code available yet, a Windows app is in preparation to let us play with the technology (project page). And maybe someday, no one will no longer have to suffice from a friend’s 5’30 parachute jump (sick’)…