In the age of the instant, your smartphone is your best friend. One of its varied capabilities is making videos — be it home movies or professional ones. A lot of people have started making movies — shot and edited — on their smartphones. And with the kind of apps available out there, you can too.
Pinnacle Studio
iOS users are familiar with iMovie. While that app is good, Pinnacle Studio is a definite step up. You can work with audio, video and photos on your device, or access them from Vimeo or Dropbox or Google Drive, arrange them on the Storyboard, edit, add effects, animation, transition and titles and viola, you’re done.
Movie Edit Touch
Specifically for Windows devices, this app is pretty much on par with a lot of video editors for Android and iOS, a good change from the generic sub-par fare.
They can do so much better; which they have with this app. The video editor works much like iMovie, is optimised for touch control, lets you make frame-by-frame edits and provides automatic and manual colour correction. My favourite feature is the Ken Burns effect for photos.
Magisto
The app is a “movie maker” — an excellent one. Magisto generates movies for you — it analyses your videos and photos and splices them together, “creating a professional looking movie — an edit that you’ll be proud to share with your friends”, a claim that it usually satisfies. Of course, you have the choice to manually add audio or play with edits, filters or transitions.
Montaj
Montaj, montage, po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Montaj is the videographic cousin of Twitter — short and editable. Shoot a few five-second clips, shake them to assign filters and audio, and share them. For the less adventurous, you can arrange, assign and edit manually on the storyboard as well.
Kinemaster Pro
This is one of those apps that you have to pay for, and you’ll never be sorry. There is a trial version too, but it watermarks your videos. The app is for Android. It is well-designed, and provides a multi-track timeline with full drag-and-drop support for audio, video and photos. My favourite part is the dictaphone-like feature that lets you provide narration.