ON THIS DAY: Windows Camera hands-on with slow motion video

Windows Camera app with turtle

(Image credit: Windows Central)
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Features like slow-motion video might seem commonplace or even trivial these days, but the excitement for 720p120 footage back then was very real. Of course, it wasn't perfect, and the 30 FPS output files had room for improvement, but it was an appreciated moment of feature parity for Windows 10 Mobile.

The article below was first published by Marc Guim on Friday, Nov 6, 2015 — Ben Wilson, Senior Editor

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To enable slow motion capture, go into video mode and tap the turtle icon. Tap the video icon or click the camera button to start recording. That's it! The video is captured at 720p (1280 x 720) at 120 frames per second. When played back, it's four times slower than normal speed.

Hands-on: Windows Camera slow motion on Lumia 930 - YouTube Hands-on: Windows Camera slow motion on Lumia 930 - YouTube
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You can edit the slow motion video from the camera as well. During the preview, tap the Edit slow motion option. You'll be able to trim and change the speed on parts of the clip. While this is a great feature to have, we found that the video quality of our saved edited clips is noticeably worse than the original files.

Another interesting thing we noticed is that even though the clips are shot at 120 fps, the files imported into our computer are 30 fps. This is great for most users because the clips are already slowed down, ready for sharing. Advanced editors would prefer to have the 120 fps files that give them more control when editing the videos.

Sample slow motion video

Lumia 930 camera slow motion sample - YouTube Lumia 930 camera slow motion sample - YouTube
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Overall, we're happy with the new feature. Sure, we would like to have slow motion on 1080p clips instead of 720p, but the current Lumias are probably not capable of that. We wouldn't be surprised if that's featured in the upcoming Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL.

Have you tried slow motion video on your Lumia 1520, 930, or Icon? Share your experiences so far in the comments!


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Mark Guim
Former Video Editor

Mark Guim was formerly a Video Editor at Windows Central. He switched to Windows because the MacBook Pro isn't Pro enough. You can follow him on Twitter at @markguim.

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