Blue View – The Best iPad Video Editing App
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There are a lot of video editing apps for an iPad
One goal for our upcoming trek in Portugal is to make a few videos along the way. Last year, on the Via Francigena, we experienced a plethora of wonderful sights and unique places that would have made great videos, but unfortunately, we didn’t bring the right tools. Our old iPad 2s certainly weren’t powerful enough. While Marcie did bring a small, inexpensive notebook computer for posting blogs and photos, it was pretty anemic for any serious video editing, and I certainly didn’t want to lug my big laptop around in my backpack for four months.
For this trek, we’re remedying the problem with two iPad Air 3rd generation tablets. Marcie will use hers to document our travels, post blogs and edit and upload pictures to our website. I’ll be using mine for route planning and research, but more importantly, editing and posting videos. The new iPad Air tablets have considerably more power than our old ones, and should be up to the task.
There are still a couple of things missing in this plan, however. We also need a few apps, and high on the list is a good video editor. While there are dozens of video editing apps available, most don’t have the features and capabilities I want. In addition to the basic editing functions – add, delete, cut, and trim video segments, I think a good video editor should have the following:
Audio recorder – Unlike many, more talented people, I can’t just narrate a video as it’s being recorded. My attempts always end up with me being tongue-tied, having painfully long pauses while I try to think of just the right word or my voice being drowned out by a passing gaggle of boisterous tourists. I need to write and then read from a script, and it might still require a dozen retakes to get a ten second narration just right. I’d be satisfied using a separate audio app as long as the output can be imported into the video app.
Media library – I want lots of royalty-free music, backgrounds, video clips and special effects to choose from.
Import media - It should have the ability to import video clips and music in several different, non-proprietary formats from an SD card. I have a media collection on my laptop that I’d like to be able to transfer to a card and import to the iPad once we’re on the trek.
Multiple video and audio tracks – I’d like at least 6 tracks to add voice-over, background music, title, text, graphics, picture-in-picture stills and video clips that I typically add to the primary video clip.
Direct export to YouTube – This feature, with a press of a button, signs onto and uploads the finished video directly to my YouTube channel.
Effects – I’d like the app to have several transitions to choose from, as well as provide keyframes, zoom in/out, speed up, slow down, and reverse.
Titling – The editor should give me the flexibility to adjust font, size, color, border and background, as well as starting and ending effects.
Audio mixer – It should have the ability to use keyframes to adjust audio levels on individual audio tracks. Auto-ducking, which automatically reduces the volume of the background music during narration, would be nice.
Export – should be able to control the format, quality, and resolution of the finished video, and then allow it to be uploaded to external storage.
Tutorials – My laptop video editor, PowerDirector, has hundreds of tutorial videos available, both by the manufacturer (only so-so), as well as many by third party videographers (most of which are pretty darn good). Hopefully, the iPad editor will also have a lot of tutorials online, so when I want to layer the chroma key effect or color grade my video with a LUT (or figure out what that all means), I can find a good tutorial on the subject.
User Manual – As a last resort, I’ve been known to look something up in a user’s manual, and having a comprehensive online manual is a definite plus.
Cost – Free is good, but I’m willing to pay a reasonable amount for the right editor. A number of video editors I’ve checked have a trial version, a dumbed down version, or a version that is limited in some way that is free. This is nice, as I can get a feel for the product and its features before plunking down my money.
Okay, so which video editors made the cut. A great many were eliminated because they lacked one or more of the features I felt were important. Multiple tracks is an example – this is one feature I really like and most of the editors I checked didn’t have this capability. This narrowed the field down to six, then I eliminated three more because of cost. For example, Adobe Premiere Rush CC appears to be a fine, full featured app, but costs $10/month. I think paying $120 a year for an iPad app is too much – I pay less than that for my favorite laptop editor, PowerDirector. Likewise, Splice is another highly rated app, but costs $150/ year. Ouch! The three remaining apps are reviewed below…
#3. PowerDirector Video Editor by CyberLink
I was disappointed in PowerDirector for IOS
Last year, CyberLink announced that they were introducing an IOS version of their fine PC based video editor, PowerDirector. I really like the PC version and had high expectations for the new iPad compatible product. When it became available, I downloaded the trial version and gave it a try. It definitely has some pluses: the user interface is much like the PC version, so if you are familiar with it, the learning curve is short – I put together a short video using four segments and our usual opening and closing splash in about half an hour; there are loads of royalty free downloads available, from stock video clips to background music; it was simple to upload the finished video to YouTube. On the downside: it only allows four tracks; there’s not much in the way of help and tutorials available, although it is a new product and perhaps this will improve with time; the key features like animations and titling options are stripped down from the PC version; the cost is a little on the high side at $35/year (I was hoping there might be a price break since I already pay $85/year for the PC version, but they sort of scoffed at this suggestion).
#2. iMovie by Apple
iMovie is easy to use and has the basic features
This is a free app that does most of the basic stuff I want and was easy to learn and use. I put together the same video as above in about the same amount of time - about half an hour. The features are limited and there aren’t a lot of free downloads for background music, stock video and pix, etc. but for the price, it’s quite good.
#1. LumaFusion by Luma Touch
LumaFusion is full featured, but complicated
This app is powerful – it truly rivals my desktop video editor. It has all the features I want... and a host of others that I haven’t figured out yet. The cost is a one time purchase price of $30 – also not too bad. There are a number of third party tutorials available, as well as a whole series of well done learning videos by Luma Touch – which is a good thing, because the user interface is quite complicated. There are a couple of downsides. As I mentioned, the user interface is quite complex – it took me an hour to get my first basic video put together, and I haven’t come close to learning how to use most of the features on my list; there are a number of free music, special effects, and stock video downloads, but they really want you to purchase their “Storybook” add-on with hundreds more royalty-free downloads at $70/year.
I decided to purchase LumaFusion in the hopes that with all the tutorials available, even my geriatric brain will eventually master it. I also downloaded iMovie, just in case I need a Plan B.