Since Vine hit the scene, and Instagram introduced video to its features, putting together short videos has been elevated to an art. Flipagram, a great free app available for iOS [No Longer Available]and Android [No Longer Available],  makes it easier than ever to do just that by turning your photos into creative videos.

Combining an easy to use interface with powerful video features, Flipagram creates beautiful short videos or slideshows of your best work.

Adding Photos

Getting started with Flipagram, the first thing you'll want to do is add photos to use in your mini-video. You can use photos that you've already posted on Instagram or Facebook, but of course you will have to grant the app access to your accounts. Alternatively, you could just use photos that are saved on your smartphone, by accessing your photo albums.

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If you plan on uploading the video to Instagram, think about how many photos you'll need to fill 15 seconds worth of time. If you're planning to share it on Flipagram itself, you're looking to fill a whole 30 seconds worth of time. Alternatively, if you want to share the video elsewhere, you could make it any length you want!

After you've selected your photos, you can rearrange them manually or sort them by oldest to newest, newest to oldest, or just shuffle their order.

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Setting The Timing

You have complete control over the timing of your mini video. If you don't want to worry about timing, you can have the app automatically adjust the length of time each image appears. If you want fine control over the timing, you can adjust from slow to fast, using a sliding menu.

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The way the app works, each image is displayed for the same amount of time as the other images. If you want to get creative and show certain images for longer, you can simply add that image multiple times in the first step, and drag and drop them so they are side by side.

Finishing Touches

You can add music to your Flipagram from your music library, using songs you have transferred or purchased from iTunes. You can also search for music within the app and add songs, but in order to use them for free you're limited to a 30-second excerpt. If you want to use the entire song, you're going to have to pay for the song, which will set you back $1.29, as you're purchasing the song from iTunes within Flipagram.

If your video is shorter than the full length of the song that you've chosen (or even the 30 second excerpt), you can choose which part of the song will be used with your image. This is also done using a very easy sliding menu.

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Putting the final touches on your video involves entering a title, which will appear on the video, and you can also select the font and colour. If you're using the free app, your videos are going to feature a Flipagram watermark. If you want to remove the watermark, or add a watermark of yourself, you're going to have to opt for the $2.99 in-app purchase to do so.

Once you've created your video, you can share it directly from the app to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, or via email and text message. You can also create a link to the video to share it anywhere you want.

Get Creative with Flipagram

The most obvious use for Flipagram is to simply showcase your favourite photos alongside your favourite tunes. At the same time, you can get very creative with your Flipagrams. You can use it to create mini stop-motion videos (check out some awesome stop-motion videos for inspiration), or use it to tell a tiny story with a series of photos.

We're also sure that brands could put Flipagram to great use as a marketing tool, showcasing their products or services, and uploading the videos to their social network of choice.

Another idea is to put all the photos you took in one month (or even one year) in a video, to get a speedy little snapshot of your life and where you've been during that time. Alternatively, you could take one photo a day of yourself (or the same scene) and then load all the photos into Flipagram and see how it changes overtime. For travellers, putting all the photos taken on a specific trip is another great way to relive the memories.

Flipagrams We Love

There's already quite a lot of talented people sharing interesting videos created with Flipagram. You can find inspiration and entertainment on Flipagram's Instagram account.  These are a few of the videos that caught our eye:

If you're more interested in using Instagram's native video feature (or Vine's for that matter), be sure to check out our guide to everything you need to know about Instagram video.

Download: Flipagram for iOS / Flipagram for Android (Free)

How are you going to use Flipagram? Let us know in the comments.