Want to improve the high-quality photos and videos you've taken on your phone? Chances are your smart phone has video-editing tools built right in that can help you craft a polished video that's easily shared.
Apple took the first step with the iOS version of iMovie, a $5 download from the App Store. iPhone users can create movie masterpieces in minutes, simply by plopping content into themed, customizable templates and adding fancy transitions, special effects, and soundtracks. Now other phone makers are serving up their own video-editing apps, free and preinstalled on the phone.
These apps let you arrange and rearrange video clips and still photos, which you can make more compelling via the "Ken Burns effect"—a slow zoom in or pan to simulate movement. Of course, none of the apps has the number of effects or tools found in a full desktop program such as Adobe Premiere Elements. But with a little practice, you can easily make your smart-phone videos much more enjoyable for the people with whom you share.
Apple iPhone. iMovie, the gold standard of video-editing apps, is the only app in this roundup that lets you use the phone's camera and audio recorder while you're in the app, so you can add narration or take a new picture or video while editing your work of art. The app provides two ways to create pro-quality presentations. You can add your own photos and videos to ready-made presentations called Trailers, which contain stock photos, videos, music, credits, and other elements. There are 12 themes, ranging from Bollywood to Swashbuckler. But I found it easier to make videos from scratch, by dropping my content into a timeline, then choosing from eight treatments that reflect a wide range of moods, from newsy to sentimental.
Which smart phone is right for you? Check our cell phone buying guide and Ratings.
BlackBerry Z10. Story Maker, a brand-new app on BlackBerry's brand-new operating system, lacks the prefab templates of other video apps but does provide a nice array of color effects, ranging from black and white to a saturated color palette to enhance your creations. More impressive are Story Maker's intuitive controls for fine-tuning videos. It's easy to select, insert, and rearrange your content on the apps timeline, and you can also trim and make other tweaks to an element by pressing your finger on it, which summons the editing menu. And you can easily add or change titles and music.
HTC One VX. Movie Editor is the easiest-to-use video-editing app in this group, but that's because it offers only three themes: Formal, Birthday, and Travel. It lets you rearrange photos and video clips, but I couldn't find any editing tools or customization options.
Video editing should be radically better on the upcoming HTC One's Video Highlights app, which has six templates and several intriguing features never before seen on a phone: These include the ability to automatically aggregate photos and videos according to time and location where they were taken, as well as a new photographic element called Zoe, a 3-second video clip made up of 19 individual still photographs. I'll have more on Video Highlights in my review of the HTC One in the coming weeks.
LG Optimus G. Video Wiz, like iMovie, is an app that can work wonders with a tossed salad of video clips and photos (see our sample video, below). There are no Trailer options as in iMovie, and you can't add narration or shoot new content while editing. But the timeline editing options are just as intuitive, and the app comes with seven treatments, called Styles, with dynamic transitions and other effects. Styles range from the baroque-laced Sentimental (think wedding video) to the aptly named Pump it Up (think smart-phone commercial). Bummer: Saving the final edit of 90-second video can take several, interminably long minutes. This app is also on the LG Escape and Spectrum 2 in our Ratings.
