- What's the best video editing app on iPhone
and iPad right now?
Well since last year's video there's been
some awesome new updates,
and some really big changes to
the leading iOS video editors,
so here's our latest recommendations.
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Hey it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video,
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so let's jump into it.
Every year the video editing apps on both Android
and iPhone seem to get more and more powerful,
we did a full overview of the video editing landscape
on both Android and iOS late last year,
but there's been some really significant
app updates since then.
In case you missed it,
in the last round we narrowed the choices
down to iMovie and Pinnacle,
now both have had some significant updates since then,
and there's been a number of new apps promising
to do even better,
so after testing and retesting all the best options,
in this video I'm gonna run through
my latest picks for best video editing apps on iOS,
and also show you how easy it is to edit with our top pick.
And make sure you stick around to the end,
because after that I'll also be sharing
three bonus tips everyone can use to speed
up your editing and reduce rework
no matter which app you choose,
and while you're watching,
make sure to let us know down in the comments
what your favorite video editing app
for iPhone or iPad is right now,
and why,
you recommendation may help someone else figure out
which app is right for their videos,
I'll be watching in the comments too,
so I'll see you down there.
So after testing all the major apps currently available,
so things like Wevideo,
Filmorago,
Adobe Clip,
Quik,
Kinemaster,
which is a relatively new addition on iOS,
it's been on Android for a while,
but now there's an iOS version,
also iMovie,
Pinnacle,
and Lumafusion,
we've narrowed the list down,
so our shortlist then includes iMovie,
Kinemaster and Lumafusion,
so overall a lot of the video editing apps
available on iOS are very basic,
and most of them are template-based or theme-based,
so even things like Adobe Premiere Clip,
which is a really popular editing solution
out there for a lot of people,
is really, really basic,
which is really surprising considering it comes from Adobe
which make Adobe Premiere,
which is an amazingly advanced piece
of video editing software.
There's other things like Pinnacle,
which is still a solid solution,
obviously that was one of our top picks
in last year's video but in the last year
it hasn't really grown much,
whereas you've got things like Kinemaster
and Lumafusion which are really taking over the space.
So to narrow that list down from our top three,
iMovie,
Kinemaster and Lumafusion,
down to our top two,
it's Kinemaster and Lumafusion.
iMovie is still a solid option,
and if you're just starting out
and you don't want really advanced video editing,
then stick with iMovie,
but if you're after something more advanced,
and something that's going to mimic
what video editing is like on desktop or laptop,
on your iPhone or iPad,
then you need to check out Kinemaster and Lumafusion.
Now before we jump into which one is the best one overall,
let's run through the pros and cons of each,
and also highlight some of the key features.
So Kinemaster and Lumafusion are the clear standout
when it comes to video editing on your iOS device,
the amount of power and performance
you have on both of these apps,
they're both actually really, really similar,
obviously the interfaces are totally different,
and their approach to video editing totally different,
but there's a lot of overlap in the features,
they're both as I said really, really powerful,
you can import a heap of different file types
and footage from all different places,
and these things are gonna edit them fine,
you've got a heap of control over photos as well as video,
you've got control over color correction,
you've got amazing control over your audio,
and there's a heap of built-in presets and effects
to really help take your video editing
to the next level as well,
so looking at the differences then,
and the standout features on both of them,
we'll start off with Kinemaster,
so Kinemaster as I said is only a relatively new addition
in the video editing space on iOS,
it's been out on Android for quite a while,
and is one of our top picks
for best video editing app on Android as well.
You just can't dismiss the amount
of power and performance that you have in this app.
The way that it supports multiple video layers
or video tracks inside your editing project
is really powerful,
it's so easy to stack up your video layers,
so you can have your primary video track,
and then on top of it bring in some photos or some B-roll,
or overlay footage,
or even your titles,
and it's so easy just to tap and pick up movie clips
around to position them to build
the story that you're after.
The built-in animated titles are actually really,
really good,
usually this is something that I would just gloss over,
yep, you can add titles,
but the animated titles in this actually
look really professional,
and they're so easy to tap and edit
and type your own text in,
and move them around in your timeline
to have them where you want them,
it is really, really powerful,
and they look really decent.
But there's also a direct link in the app to
the Kinemaster marketplace,
where you can purchase more templates
that you can use in your videos.
I also really like the level of control
you get over your audio as well,
so besides just having the ability to fade your audio in,
fade it out,
and just adjust the volume as you would find
in most editing software,
you actually get key frame control for your audio,
meaning you can just easily just boost up
the volume in certain sections,
or drop it down in certain sections,
really, really easily,
so that again something that you normally find on desktop
video editing software,
but they have carried through into this as well,
so an amazing feature.
Now while there's not a lot of things
that I don't like about Kinemaster,
there's two standouts that I think a lot
of people aren't going to like.
The first is the built-in color correction,
it's there,
you can color correct your clips,
but it is very limited,
you're limited to built-in presets or filters
like you would have on Instagram,
so you can apply a filter to your video,
or you have the ability to adjust the brightness,
the contrast and the saturation,
so in most cases that's more than enough,
but these days having the ability to adjust
more than just filters or brightness contrast
and saturation would be an amazing feature,
and it's actually something that Lumafusion has,
it's got amazing color correction,
and we are gonna get to that in a minute.
But the other downside,
is the pricing structure,
or the pricing model of Kinemaster,
it's not a one-time purchase,
it's actually either a monthly subscription,
or an annual subscription,
so a monthly subscription is gonna cost
you around five dollars a month,
or you can buy an annual subscription
for around 40 dollars per year,
so it's not gonna break the bank,
and considering how powerful this editing application is,
I think it's definitely justified,
but I know it's something that every
time we mention Kinemaster,
and people look at the pricing model and realize that it's
a monthly or annual subscription,
they don't actually buy and own the app outright,
then it annoys a few people,
so it's definitely worth mentioning,
because the other app Lumafusion,
it's a one-time purchase.
If you don't want to pay the money you
can actually use Kinemaster for free,
but it will have a watermark,
or some text saying Kinemaster,
or made with Kinemaster,
written on top of your video file.
Now there's one other thing I want to mention here,
is not really a negative,
it's something that you should be aware
of if your gonna be using Kinemaster to edit your videos,
is that you currently can't edit portrait videos,
you can't edit one by one or square videos in it either,
it's literally just 16 by nine widescreen
videos only at this point,
so not a deal breaker,
just something you need to be aware of.
So now onto Lumafusion,
note this is an app that I pretty much dismissed
the first couple of times that I downloaded
it and installed it,
tried to give it a go,
it was crashing,
the feature list didn't look that impressive,
but now it's actually a really, really
solid contender when it comes
to best video editing app on iOS,
if you haven't tried it yet,
it's definitely worth testing out,
one of the key things that I love about it,
is the first thing that happens when you open the app,
is it asks you what type of project do you want to create,
simple but really, really powerful,
if you're setting up your project correctly
from the moment you open the project,
that's insane,
the flow on from that for your editing project is massive,
so you get options like choosing
the frame rate of your project,
you get to choose the aspect ratio,
whether it's 16 by nine widescreen,
whether it's a portrait video,
or one by one,
or a square video,
you get all those options up front before
you even start editing,
so that is amazing,
and once again just the same as Kinemaster,
it's a really, really powerful app,
the things that you can do in here really mimic
what you can do on a desktop computer,
so you've got the ability to add in multiple video layers,
same as Kinemaster,
the color correction in Lumafusion is amazing,
it was probably good in Kinemaster,
having the ability to have filters
and brightness contrast and saturation,
but in Lumafusion you get so much more,
you get a full spectrum of color controls
to really tweak and adjust the look
of your videos inside the app,
so that is definitely a key feature of Lumafusion.
And just the same as Kinemaster,
there are a heap of tools designed for
your audio editing as well,
so you have the ability once again to add key frames
and adjust your audio up and down
throughout different parts of your audio files,
so that's not just your audio in your video,
it's also your music files as well,
so you get multiple audio tracks as well
as multiple video tracks,
and you can adjust the volumes on those tracks
on a track by track basis,
so if you lay out all your music files on one track,
and you want to drop the volume on all your music files,
you can just drop the volume on that one track,
and all the music tracks on that will be lowered,
so having that much control over
your audio is a really powerful feature to have,
especially on your iOS device.
I really like how easy this app is to use,
just simple things like being able to double tap
on your screen,
will add a cut in your timeline wherever
the playback head is,
so you don't have to select your clip,
go up to a menu and press cut or split clip at that point,
you can just do it by two finger tapping on your phone,
so there's a heap of little things like
that that just make this app stand out.
Lumafusion also lets you edit things like 360 videos,
so while it doesn't give you
that full 360 editing experience that you would find
in something like Adobe Premiere on your computer,
it does let you edit the files down,
and it applies the required metadata when
you're exporting your video files or saving them out,
to places like Facebook and YouTube so
that they're actually recognized as 360 video files,
so that is an amusing feature.
So those are probably the biggest features
or the standout features for me,
but in regards to the things that aren't so good,
or the things that I don't like so much,
the first one is after using
the animated titles in Kinemaster,
there really isn't anything equivalent in Lumafusion,
there's built-in titles,
but they're not the same,
you just want static titles,
there are there,
but in order to get the professional animated titles,
they're actually not in Lumafusion,
or they're not built into Lumafusion,
another thing to be aware of,
is how Lumafusion actually handles multiple layers of video,
it does it well,
but I do feel that Kinemaster does it better,
it seems to be so much more seamless to drag a clip in,
or to import a clip onto your timeline,
you've got to pick up and move it around in Kinemaster,
and you can do all the same things in Lumafusion,
it just seems to be a little clunkier,
so you can still pick up a clip and move it around,
but when you're moving them up and down video layers,
is where it has been a little bit buggy for me,
sometimes it would snap back to the end of your entire edit,
and you've got to go and find it and bring
it back to where you want it,
whereas on Kinemaster that never happened,
so it's not a deal breaker and I'm sure
it's something they can fix in update,
or it may have already been fixed by
the time you're watching this,
but there's a couple of little things around
the usability of multiple layers in Lumafusion
I don't like compared to Kinemaster.
So now the only other thing we haven't mentioned
yet is the price,
so Lumafusion isn't a monthly fee or an annual fee,
it's a one-off fee,
meaning you can buy the app and then get
all the updates you like for a flat fee,
so you can currently pick it up for around
the 27 dollar price point,
so it's definitely not gonna break the bank,
and if you look at the amount of power
and performance and what this app will actually let you do,
then you should be able to justify that 27 dollars
if you're serious about making professional-looking
videos with your smart phone.
So overall my pick for best video editing application
on iOS right now goes to Lumafusion,
I really like the complete package,
I like the price point,
I like that you can edit portrait,
I like that you can edit one by one style videos,
so that on the go you could be editing
short videos down for social media,
I like that you have the ability to color correct,
that is an amazing feature,
the level of control you have over color correcting
your videos is second to none,
there is no other app out there on iOS that
let's you have that amount of control on your iOS device.
Okay so now for those three tips to help you edit faster
no matter which editing application you're using,
the first one is to edit backwards.
So what does that mean?
So when you're actually filming your videos,
if you're creating videos like this,
then you want to make sure that the last take
that you do is the one that you want
to use in your final edit,
so make your last take your best take,
the last sentence the last paragraph,
the last thing you say,
make sure that's the one you want to use,
so then when you're editing,
instead of editing from left to right,
or start to finish as you normally would,
edit backwards,
so edit from right to left,
so go right to the end of your timeline
and start working backwards,
because what that will do will ensure your gonna
be hitting the best take first,
so instead of having to play through all
your edits and find the one that you actually like,
if you know that the last one is the best one,
let's start from the end and you always
had that last one first,
then it's just a matter of removing all
your bad takes in the middle,
until you get to the last take of the paragraph before,
or the sentence before.
So this will speed up your editing dramatically.
Tip number two is to make sure that you
are matching your settings across your camera
your editing software and the file that
you're exporting as well.
If there is a mismatch in say a frame rate between
the footage that you're filming on your camera,
the frame rate that your editing at in your editing system,
and the file that you are exporting,
then you can open yourself up to weird motion
or jittery playback,
or stuttering in the videos if there is an mismatch,
so you need to make sure that whatever frame rate,
and whatever settings you are using in your camera
you match in your editing software,
and that you also match again in the file
that you are exporting,
so across the three keep your settings exactly the same.
Tip number three is to edit first,
and add all your effects and things afterwards.
So the first thing that most people do when
they get to their editing,
is they jump straight into the fun stuff,
the color correction, the effects,
and everything to make their videos look good,
without focusing on editing the content down first,
so the tip here is to focus on the content first,
edit all your footage down
to something small and manageable,
before you even look at an effect or a color grade,
or any changes to your footage,
focus on cutting your content down first,
just in case there's something wrong with the content,
and you may not even be able to use that video,
and you just wasted a heap of time.
But also for the fact that once you start
adding all these color corrections and effects
and things to your video footage,
it actually slows down your editing software,
it doesn't matter if you're editing on your desktop
or your iPad,
it's gonna slow down the process,
because it's got to process all
of those effects while you're editing,
so focus on editing your content down first,
before you apply any effects,
and that will speed up your editing dramatically.
Now these are just three tips from our
full video editing process guide,
The Primal Video Method,
you can grab your free copy now linked onscreen,
there's also a link below in the description,
I'll see you soon.