Both iOS and Android smartphones have outstanding cameras, and increasingly, users have added video to their photographic memories. Video-editing apps let you trim footage, add filters, and create short movies directly on your mobile device. Some apps offer advanced features for color grading, lighting, or special effects to make your videos truly unique. You can also edit audio tracks and add music or voice-overs to your videos.
The best video-editing apps for iOS and Android generally offer more options than the standard editing tools included with smartphones. Here are just a few of our favorites.
Beatleap
Edit your video to the beat. Beatleap offers a video editing experience that’s audio-oriented, in which the music you choose dictates special effects or styles that slow down or speed up your video. With artificial intelligence (A.I.) machine learning at its core, the app lets you choose the clips you want and combine them with the music you choose, while the app does the rest by syncing to the beat. Finishing touches include filters like VCR, Glitch, and Film, enhancing the light, and experimenting with unique effects and styles. The app provides 20 editing tools and effects, 50 filters, 1,000 professional songs to synchronize with video, automatic trimming, cutting, and mixing of clips according to the selected track, filters and overlays, and more. Epidemic Sound provides the sound library for the app. Beatleap is free, but a subscription is needed for unlimited access to all features and content.
Adobe Premiere Rush
Adobe Premiere Rush lets you shoot, edit, and share your smartphone videos to any platform. You can create professional-looking videos to share via social media directly from the app, and you can work across any devices you own. Editing features include drag and drop of video, audio, graphics, and photos, plus the enhancement of color, titles, transitions, voice-overs, and more. Four video and three audio tracks give you creative flexibility. You can customize titles, add music, record voice-overs, and use advanced tools powered by Adobe’s Sensei A.I. engine for balancing sound, noise reduction, and auto-ducking. Sharing features let you resize video aspect ratios for social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Rush is free to use but limited to three exports unless you upgrade for $10 per month for unlimited exports and 100GB of cloud storage — or you are an Adobe Creative Cloud or Adobe Premiere Pro subscriber, in which case Rush is free. New versions let you select the start and end points of the pan and zoom effect on still images, as well as change the scale and position.
iMovie
iMovie for iOS is the companion app to Apple’s desktop program. It offers an entree into elegant, Hollywood-style movies and trailers on your iPhone or iPad. The app’s intuitive touch interface breaks down movie editing barriers for beginners while Apple packs in ready-made themes for movie creation with coordinated titles, transitions, and music. You can augment your videos with filters, slo-mo, fast-forward, built-in musical soundtracks, and sound effects, or just narrate your own voice-over. Among its featured special effects are green screen, split-screen, and picture-in-picture. When you’re finished creating your video, you can easily move projects between your iPhone, iPad, or Mac for further refinement or connect a monitor to the mobile app for editing on the large screen. Then, save the finished movie to your photo library or share it on YouTube in 4K or 1080p at up to 60 frames per second. When you add theme music in project settings, the soundtrack automatically matches your movie length.
Cyberlink PowerDirector
CyberLink PowerDirector is a hugely popular consumer video app for Windows, also just released for the Mac with a companion app on Android and iOS. It features a multitrack timeline in a traditional interface for full HD and 4K video editing, plus special effects, slo-mo, voice-overs, a built-in video stabilizer, and more. With PowerDirector, you get special effects editing, audio editing with fade effects and voice-overs, mask tools, video collage effects, picture-in-picture, and blue screen or green screen for editing background environments. When you’re done, you can easily share your videos to YouTube and Facebook. Native export is 720p, but with an in-app purchase, you can export to 1080p and
Vizmato
If you’re into fun moviemaking, look no further than the easy-to-use Vizmato. The slideshow and video-editing app lets you add filters, themes, music, effects, and text to movies for sharing on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, and more. Vizmato provides more than 20 video themes and twice as many special effects, plus 140 samples of background music to spice up your videos. A voice-changer effect lets you disguise your voice to sound like a baby, chipmunk, ghost, and other characters. You can slow down, speed up, or reverse effects on your video or add custom text and stickers to your movie. A slideshow maker converts photos to videos, complete with theme and royalty-free music. This app also lets you shoot HD video via its live recorder. Vizmato is free, but a subscription to the Pro version for $12 per year removes the watermark, adds a Visual FX pack, and provides access to more royalty-free music.
Quik
Quik is a video editor from GoPro that’s designed to work with the clips derived from that company’s various action cams. But even if you don’t own a GoPro camera, you can still use this excellent app to edit videos from any source. Quik finds the compelling parts of your clips, adds transitions and effects, and syncs everything with a musical score. You can collect up to 200 photos and video clips from your gallery, albums, Google Photos, Dropbox, GoPro Plus, or GoPro Quik Key and customize your narrative with text and music. Just choose the photos and videos, and then choose a theme like Action, Boxed, or Flick that pulls together your video’s text, transitions, and special effects. You can add text, use Quick’s smart cuts to splice clips together, speed up or slo-mo, add GPS stickers, and choose a soundtrack to accompany your adventures. Quik automatically syncs transitions to a musical beat. The app’s Flashbacks 24H feature automatically reviews a day’s footage and creates an original composite video from it. Quik now supports the HERO7 Black, HERO7 Silver, and HERO7 White cameras,
Horizon Camera
You have committed the first deadly video sin: You shot a video in portrait orientation. You didn’t mean to, and Horizon Camera will never tell. Rather, Horizon ensures that every video and photo you capture will have a landscape orientation, regardless of how you shot your scene. Even if you rotate your phone while capturing your video, the end result will still be horizontal. The software works by automatically leveling your photos and videos using your phone’s gyroscope while you record, correcting the orientation so that the scene is always parallel to the ground. The app features various resolutions, including VGA, HD, Full HD, and 4K, and supports 60 fps and 120 fps (slow motion), fun filters, geotagging, three leveling modes, and HDR photos. The app also supports various video aspect ratios like square 1:1, wide 16:9, and standard 4:3, and lets you record videos and photos with your front or back camera. A pro version costs $2 for extra filter packs and to remove the watermark.
Filmora Go
Filmmakers using FilmoraGo can import still photos and video clips and morph them into one moving film. If you’re unsure of your artistic and directorial skills, there’s no need for concern— the app offers several templates and themes to help users create polished-looking videos. You simply plug the images and clips you’d like to use into the template. Clips can be imported from anywhere, including Facebook and Instagram. FilmoraGo provides a wide range of potential soundtrack choices through its library of licensed songs, or you can always choose to record your own audio. You can reverse play your videos, apply slow and fast motion effects, rotate images, and more. Try out several different transitions to move from one clip to the next, and test out the overlays and filters. A text and titles library lets you create text-based animations and still or motion graphics. Finally, choose an export option that best fits where you’d like to save and publish your video. For example, export videos in square 1:1 format for Instagram, classic 16:9 for YouTube, or share to
Kinemaster
If you’re shooting film out in the field and require a fully-equipped video editor, KineMaster may be the tool for you. This app has a user-friendly interface, but it’s equipped with powerful tools like multiple video layers, blending modes, voice-overs, chroma-key, speed controls, transitions, subtitles, stickers, and special effects. Trim, splice, or crop your clips with KineMaster, or add professional time-lapse or slow-motion effects. Modify your volume quality through auto volume, ducking, or other hands-on tools. Keyframe animation lets you add motion to layers, and the app also supports multiple aspect ratios. The app’s Asset Store offers music, clip graphics, fonts, stickers, and transitions to give videos a special signature. Currently, you can export up to 4K, 2160p video at 30 fps. The app’s latest updates include a new reverse tool, recent speech modulations for the voice changer, advanced text settings, and a chroma-key for image layers.
Luckily, KineMaster Premium is an affordable tool for artists— it’ll cost you $3.99 a month or $23 for an entire year. After buying premium, you’ll be able to try out more editing features in the app, and you’ll remove the watermark that appears when you share your videos.
