Galaxy S4 Overlay Time

[smai000]

Hi,

I used the app for the first time this weekend, it is amazing! When I overlay video using my Galaxy S4, it takes about 50 mins per lap to overlay, is that normal?

[Harry]

Hi,

Yes, this is possible. For older smartphones (sorry), the time to overlay can be around factor 15 bigger than the actual lap time. This will change for many phones starting with the next minor version: I plan to add support for hardware accelerated overlays here (provided Android 4.4 or later is installed). Till then, you can reduce overlay time quite a bit by using HD instead of FullHD.

- Harry

[smai000]

Thanks Harry! I look forward to the hardware accelerated overlay updates for Android.

[cheeser]

Has the overlay time improved at all using a Samsung S6? I am currently using an S5 which is so much slower than my old Apple 5s.

[Harry]

Any Android phone is slower by a factor of 10 or more compared to LapTimer's iOS versions. The reason is that iOS uses hardware accelerated video encoding for a long time while Android added this feature pretty late starting with 4.3/4.4. This is the reason LapTimer (which supports any Android version 4.0 or later) uses a software library to do the encoding. It utilizes the CPU instead of a purpose made chip. I plan to support hardware encoding starting with the next LapTimer Android feature release. Not sure all Android devices running 4.4 or later will benefit from it - I assume the manufacturer needs to support it too.

- Harry