The Search Giant, Google launched Motion Stills today, a new iOS-only app that takes your existing Live Photos made with an iOS device and stabilizes them to make shareable video clips and GIFs.
For the time being, the app is available on the App Store for free. However, it is uncertain from the blog post, whether Google will end up adding the technology into its other applications, like the Google Photos cloud-based photo storage app or not.
How does Motion Stills work?
The name “Motion Stills” is a little contradictory but a great counter to “Live Photos.” Google’s approach, developed within the company’s research lab, is actually cooler than a basic Live Photos to GIF converter.
The app uses its own video stabilization algorithms to take what might otherwise be a shaky Live Photo and turns it into a GIF which you’ll actually want to see repeat.
The best thing about the app is..
It doesn’t require data connection to work, as all the processing is on-device and it also lets you tack multiple Live Photos together. Great!!
In that case, it creates a proper movie file with audio instead of GIF. You can do the same thing even if you’re converting a single Live Phot.
And you also don’t even need a Google account to use it.
Once a GIF is made, you can send it to anyone in a message, email, or share it on another app.
What’s our take on the app?
I tried it a couple of times but don’t really have a Live Photo that would test the stabilization, even so, Motion Stills has just earned a permanent spot on my iPhone.
Because GIFs are far better than Live Photos, unless you really need the sound.