Filed under: Multimedia, Video, iPhone, App Review
ReelDirector can spiff up your holiday iPhone videos
A few years ago getting video on a cellphone would have seemed out of the question. Now you can not only shoot passable videos with your iPhone 3GS, you can even edit them in style. What better way to capture those holiday moments without dragging around a lot of equipment?ReelDirector [iTunes link] has updated the popular iPhone editor to version 2. The U.S. $7.99 app from Nexvio now allows you to do multi-track sound editing and mixing, use stills in addition to video and do a Ken Burns effect. You can also trim and split imported clips. Owners of the older version can update to version 2 for free.
Other features include the ability to change the length of opening and closing titles, and automatic flip of clips that came in upside down.
I kind of marvel that you can do this all in a phone, but you can and it works pretty well. When you are done you can email your finished video (there are limits to the size of videos you can mail) or just put in in your camera roll and export it later.
There are still some weaknesses to the app. The biggest is an inability to use iTunes music for background sound. Apple does not allow this on the iPhone, but they do allow it in iMovie on the Mac. Go figure. You can record sounds live of course, and always hold the iPhone up to a speaker to get some music, but that is a pretty low-tech way to get that done. The Ken Burns effect is limited to one simple zoom-in. You also can't title projects in the middle, only at the beginning and the end. Documentation is pretty slim, and the linked video of instructions is for version 1, not version 2.
Having said all that, ReelDirector is a remarkable app. No, it's not Final Cut Pro, but it runs on a dang phone! The developers are very responsive to customer suggestions, and this update added a lot of asked-for features. If you want to get those pictures of Uncle George eating his turkey dinner edited and sent out before dessert is served -- and without leaving the table -- you can do it.
What a world.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
starq said 11:12AM on 11-27-2009
I have this app.
Awesome.
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bob said 11:55AM on 11-27-2009
I have this an it is amazing, just imagine imovie on an iphone, it works pretty much flawlessly, and has now been updated to allow audio recording on top of your video and photos with ken burns that you can control, amazing, i have this and vintagemaker and slowmo, now there is nothing i cannot do with video before i upload it to the web, it never has to reach my computer.
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Joanna D said 11:55AM on 11-27-2009
Too bad Apple decided I bought my phone before video cameras could be added to mobile phones. Oh wait...
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BeyondtheTech said 12:17PM on 11-27-2009
I was hoping a last sentence blurb would have said, "...and for Black Friday, they're temporarily dropping the price to $3.99." I have this program on watch in the BargainBin app in hopes the developer would surprise me, if only for a moment.
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BeyondtheTech said 8:37AM on 11-30-2009
Ugh, didn't see the promo codes, but was nice to see that the developer made a Cyber Monday sale price of $4.99!
BRAD said 2:54PM on 11-27-2009
Sweet update! No crashing on my iPhone - didn't even have to restart it. I love this app now and I bought it when it was 2.99! They still need to allow for the maps to be cached on the device.
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Todd Sieling said 1:50PM on 11-27-2009
I just grabbed this based on the review and comments on the app store. It really is truly amazing to think of how far the iPhone and other smartphones have moved in just a couple years. They're more like portable computers with phones than phones now.
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Nexvio said 5:09AM on 11-29-2009
Thanks Mel. Sorry about the slim documentation, we just put up a User Guide which can be accessed though "Online Tutorial" within the app.
And here are some promo codes:
YPLJ9K63E7W7
X7WMH4WM3F9H
YW7XMX994PKA
7JAM79KA46TE
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Matt said 10:29AM on 11-30-2009
Any hope in getting some promo codes that work in the Canadian store?
ryan_marsh said 10:04AM on 11-29-2009
I use this. It's like iMovie for the iPhone. Love it.
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heathsnow said 6:02PM on 11-29-2009
I DL'd this app a few days ago after reading this article. I love it if only for adding titles to the beginning of videos. I never do any post editing on my iMac but with this I can quickly add a title and whatever I like in the credits. Fun stuff :)
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chris said 10:16AM on 11-30-2009
Where can I use the promo codes?
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chris said 10:42AM on 11-30-2009
@Nexvio, thanks for the promo code! I'm really looking forward to using this! What do you think about adding the ability to do subtitles for every clip? Is that something that will be possible in the future?
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