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lonelyhollowdays

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 9, 2019
7
2
Hi,
I’ve basically been looking around the App Store with no real luck.

A lot of the video editors on iOS just plain suck. It seems a lot of them are being offered under different names providing the same features and UX under varying trials (Splice clones). Others won’t let you add audio from Files or won’t let you export the file without either watermarks, ridiculously lowered quality or reducing the actual video length without paying for the feature. While there is iMovie of course which works reasonably fine there’s the annoying UX design to deal with - I can’t see what part of the audio I’m cropping out, for instance.

Kinda ridiculous that iOS app developers have stooped to this level of pretending to offer something they’re not to get free clicks and purchases/etc. Seems to be the norm these days when it comes to anything “free” that looks reasonably decent from the ad-like fake reviews and descriptions on the Store.

Either way, enough ranting and feeling annoyed, does anyone know of a free video editor that doesn’t actually do any of the above and has a fairly reasonable UX design? I don’t need to do too much, as long as I can add audio/video/text overlays and just tweak about with them enough without having to subscribe to something or whatnot. Kinda like what Movie Maker used to do back in the Windows XP/Vista days (and no, I’m not referring to the crap that was the 2009/2011 “Live” thing)

Thanks~
 
There are no good video editing apps beyond toy quality on iOS.
You've named the two least worst ones: Splice and iMovie. They both suck for doing anything more than joining clips with transitions.
Splice won't let you important any audio file that's not in the iOS Music app, but iMovie will. Or more accurately, some audio apps can send the audio file to open in an iMovie project. You can export any audio to iMovie (with the right app) but you can't import any audio file from within iMovie except what's locked inside the music App.

Editing sound within Splice or iMovie doesn't exist except for volume and fade out. The audio will start playing at the beginning of the movie and there's nothing you can do about it within the video app. The workaround is to edit the audio file timing before exporting it into the video app.

Summary: Video editing on iOS is kindergarten league in regards to what you can do.
 
Don't you think it's a bit much for a full-featured video editor on iOS to be offered for free?

I have done video editing on my iPad using apps from iMovie to Vee to (recently) Lumafusion. They get the job done, but I just wouldn't try to do the same thing on my iPhone due to the smaller screen.
 
it's pretty obvious that appl wants its customers to use both an iOS device & their Mac. iPhones & iPads will never completely replace the need for one
 
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Don't you think it's a bit much for a full-featured video editor on iOS to be offered for free?

I have done video editing on my iPad using apps from iMovie to Vee to (recently) Lumafusion. They get the job done, but I just wouldn't try to do the same thing on my iPhone due to the smaller screen.

I wasn’t expecting anything professional grade to be released as such, something akin to what was included in XP/Vista, nothing special but for a quick little thing/simple tweak would do fine. I guess iMovie does fill that gap in reasonably.
 
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