Daily iPhone App: Video Edit

I love to use my iPhone 4's camera to take photos and videos of my kids. It's convenient, and the quality is good enough that I use it over a point and shoot to capture those spontaneous, memorable moments. Of course, you'll want to share those videos, which poses a problem. Most video I shoot has extra footage that I just don't need. I want to show off my son's first few steps, not the five minutes of coaxing it took to get him to make those steps. This is where Video Edit for the iPhone excels.

Video Edit is a basic video editing app for the iPhone. It lacks all the bells and whistles of iMovie for the iPhone, but it does do one thing exceptionally well. It lets you crop your videos quickly and easily.

You start by creating a new project and adding your video clip to the project. You can choose from your video library or record directly to the app. You can trim the video down using slider controls to select the start frame and the end frame. When you are done trimming, you can output the video back to your iPhone, add it to an email as a .Mov file or upload it to Facebook or YouTube. The app is lightweight, extremely responsive and fast. I can edit and render a 30-second video in under a minute.

The app lets you add more that one video clip to your project, but it doesn't output multiple clips very well. There are no transitions included in the app. When two clips are combined, there's no crossfade or curtain fall, just an abrupt break when one video stops and the other begins. If you want to work with more than one clip, then you should look at iMovie for the iPhone. iMovie lets you combine videos, add transitions, add music and more.

Because there's no transitions, I only use Video Edit to trim individual videos and share them when I'm done. I use Video Edit over apps like iMovie because I don't need all the extra features. I just want to trim, render and share; three things Video Edit does well. Video Edit is available for US$2.99 from the App Store.

Update: Some folks are pointing out the ability to Trim in iOS using the Photos app. It works similar to Video Edit, but does not have the automatic sharing features of Video Edit. I like being able to click render, select Facebook and automatically upload without any additional steps. With the Photos app, you have to select the clip, click on sharing and then choose the service you want to use. It's a small time savings to avoid these steps with Video Edit. Is it worth $2.99? That depends on your workflow. I bought video edit when I was running iOS4 and ~~there was no~~ was not aware of the iOS-based alternative. I still use it because it's efficient.

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Source: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/video-edit/id354701748?mt=8

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Software iPhone

I love to use my iPhone 4's camera to take photos and videos of my kids. It's convenient, and the quality is good enough that I use it...

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krisco.phillips

I started using Video Edit as well and the one distinction I'll make is that it offers the ability to trim and share multiple clips, not just one - this is something the native photo app in iOS cannot do. I will trim many clips (anywhere from 8-12 usually), add them to Video Edit's project timeline, and output them as one entire movie onto Facebook or YouTube in most cases.

I own iMovie as well, but there is one huge difference between Video Edit and iMovie: rendering speed. iMovie is BRUTALLY slow outputting the final product. I noticed the developers of Video Edit posted a funny speed test on their website http://videoeditapp.com. In my case it took 13 minutes to render a 12 minute video in iMovie? Really? Same sequence in Video Edit took me 56 secs. Seriously, just 56 secs, but who's counting.... ;)

At any rate, I'm with you Kelly; other apps have a few more features but Video Edit is what I use the majority of the time now because it's easy to use and fast. Thanks for the article and getting me turned onto the app.

January 02 2012 at 1:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

gman

Hmmm, cropping is a handy feature that we could use in conjunction with another app I am going to get called CollabraCam. I need to utilize the features of our iPhones I bought for my family last summer because right now I think we watch TV on them more than necessary. Don’t get me wrong; that’s why I bought the iPhones but it is so easy to get addicted to my DISH Network Sling Adapters capability of giving us live and recorded TV on our mobile devices. We have a schedule for who is allowed to use the Sling and I watch mine a lot on my breaks at work. I really like that I get HD quality video which looks so good on the iPhone display. I plan to make a movie with the CollabraCam and then I can crop it when editing right from my phone. How cool is that?

December 11 2011 at 2:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

ucommenter

Actually, you could trim using the native Photos app in iOS4 even. And how hard is it to click the square-with-arrow button at the bottom and select "Send to YouTube" in the native app?

December 02 2011 at 11:13 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Billy Razzle

The Camera app does a fine job of trimming video as well. You just can't combine segments as far as I know. But trimming excess video is extremely simple & effective with the free app already on your iPhone.

December 02 2011 at 10:34 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

D Rey Reynolds

So why wouldnt you just use the trim function thats on the camera roll? And 3 bucks if pretty hefty for an app that the phone already does out of the box.... Im confused.

December 02 2011 at 10:27 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

MPercentTwentyM

So...wait...I'd be paying those three dollars solely for the ability to append one video onto another? Because from what I can tell, the other functionality you described is built into the native Camera app.

December 02 2011 at 10:01 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply