If there is one way to liven up an otherwise boring moment, it’s slow-motion. Tossing a plastic bottle into the recycling bin, dropping a penny to the ground, even just pouring creamer into coffee — all can be made much more interesting with a bit of slo-mo. Until, that is, you share the video on Twitter and it plays back at normal speed.
That problem has become a thing of the past, as Twitter will now play slow-motion video uploaded by iPhone users as it is meant to be seen, the company announced yesterday. Until now, there were various workarounds that allowed slow-motion video to playback correctly, but they are no longer necessary.
There is no need to do anything special; simply upload a video from your iPhone and Twitter will recognize the video as slow-motion and take care of the rest. As a proof of concept, Twitter included a slow-motion video of a dog running through the field in the tweet announcing the new feature.
Slow motion video was originally brought to iPhones with the introduction of the iPhone 5s, which shot slow-motion video at 120 frames per second. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus took this even further, doubling the frame rate to 240 frames per second and bumping the resolution to 720p.
While there are plenty of Android phones that shoot slow-motion video as well, there was no mention of any being specifically supported. The aforementioned workarounds may still be necessary, but many phones already take care of converting the slow-motion video to a more universally watchable format.
The past few weeks have seen Twitter rolling out a number of feature fixes and enhancements. Earlier this week the “quote tweet” button was made much more useful, while last month Vine videos got a resolution upgrade.