July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

If you’re like me, your iPhone movies look like crap.

Shaky, wobbly, bouncy … it’s annoying to users and frustrating for all us buddying Scorceses, Coppolas, and Spielbergs. Even if our only audience is friends and family on Facebook.

Enter Luma.

With its recent 2.8 upgrade, the movie app replacement for Apple’s camera app uses “cinematic video stabilization” to create movies that are so smooth and clean, it’s a thing of beauty. In fact, the image above is a still from a movie shot on an iPhone with Luma … on a bike.

If I seem to be gushing, that’s because I am. I take some video occasionally when doing interviews for VentureBeat, and have received some criticism for the sadly palsied nature of the results.

I’ve tried the app myself, and the results are simply stunning. I had no idea handheld video from a phone could look so good. Here’s footage from the company showing the difference between the native iPhone camera app and Luma:

“By using advanced motion retargeting algorithms Luma not only removes handshake, but also ensures that you get the smoothest possible shot,” the company posted on its blog. “The motion retargeting algorithm automatically figures out the ideal camera motion (whether it’s a stationary, panning, dolly, or steadicam shot that you’re after) and retargets the video to match that motion.”

Luma also allows you to apply filters for various effects to your videos in a very Instagramish way, if you’re into that sort of thing. Pastel, vignette, analog, noir, toon, and the ever-favorite sepia are among the options, and the effect is applied immediately, not in post-processing. As per usual, you can inflict the results of your creativity on Facebook and Twitter, or to connections on Luma’s own budding video network.

One caveat: I did not see a share to YouTube option, which is a must-have for me. Fortunately, there is an option to save captured videos to your standard iOS camera app, from which you can simply upload to YouTube.

Overall, however, this is one of the few apps I’ll be keeping on my phone after testing. The company calls it magic. I simply have to agree.

Image credit: Luma