The reason why there are no good Time-lapse apps for Windows Phone

[ericgrover]

I am a developer, and I noticed an opportunity for an app for Windows Phone 8.1. If you search the store, you will notice that there are no Time-lapse apps that will encode a time-lapse into a video. This seemed odd to me because with WP 8.1, you can write apps that take advantage of the video encoding of Media Foundation.

So I jumped in and started writing a Time-lapse app that would create videos. And my app is coming along quite nicely. It has DSLR-like controls for the camera, etc. But then I found out why there aren't any apps in the store yet.

There is a huge memory leak in the MediaCapture API on Lumia phones. I tested it on an HTC 8x, and it doesn't leak, but it does on my Icon and my 822 with Denim.

What this means is that at highest resolution, I can only take about 30 pics with my Icon without my app crashing.

So until Microsoft fixes this issue, you won't be getting any apps that can create Time-lapse mp4 videos.

If you are interested in the details of the memory leak, check out my MSDN forum post. I can't post the url because this is my first post here, but here is the end of the url: Forums/windowsapps/en-US/554935bd-e199-41d2-98a3-2d450f4a4c33/mediacapture-memory-leak?forum=wpdevelop

 

[TheZuneLune]

Link is here.

 

[ericgrover]

I just reproduced the same memory leak in the new "Stop Motion Studio" app. It crashed with an Out Of Memory error after 77 frames on my Icon. I am assuming it did more frames because it is shooting at a slightly lower res (which you can't adjust).

 

[ericgrover]

Here is a comparison of the memory utilization of the windows phone emulator vs. my Lumia Icon while doing a stress test on the camera.

 

[mayblast]

They should've fixed this on day one.
I really hope to see your app, better sooner than later.

 

[ericgrover]

So I just received this from Microsoft Support:

"that the only work-around is to write this as a Windows Phone 8.0 targeted application.
As I understand it: The problem is an incompatibility between the new MediaCapture API’s (…used by SL8.1 and WP8.1/Universal apps) and a camera driver used on most of the Lumia devices. An updated driver is expected for some of the newer devices but unfortunately many of the older devices may not receive updated drivers so this will continue to be a problem for a while."

 

[TheZuneLune]

Too bad. I have been beta-testing this app and it is far superior to anything else out there, currently. Microsoft begs developers to create universal apps and when they do, they find bad drivers, which MS won't fix. And we wonder why there is an app gap?