iOS 13 Video Editing: A Primer
If you see a photo-editing tool available for images in the native Photos app on your iPhone, the odds are high the same tool is available for videos. The functionality extends to all video formats supported by Apple’s mobile devices, including 4K at 60 fps and slo-mo in 1080p at 240 fps. The video format supported is limited to the device you’re using. The iPhone XR, iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max support 4K video recording at 24 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps, 1080p HD video recording at 30 fps or 60 fps, Slo-mo video support for 1080p at 120 fps or 240 fps. Video-editing tools are available in iOS 13/iPadOS 13 on the iPhone SE and later, iPod touch (7th generation only), and iPad Air 2 and later.
What You Can Do
In the following paragraphs, you’ll learn how to trim, resize, and flip/rotate a video. You can also see how to adjust the brightness, saturation, and other characteristics of your video, and more. All edits are performed in the Photos app, which is located on your device’s Home screen. To find your videos and get them ready for editing:
Trimming Your Video
To trim a video in the Photos app, you must first activate the timeline directly below the video. The timeline features tiny images that make up your video. On either side of the timeline are anchors that signify the start and end of the video. The end of a video gets trimmed in the example below:
Resizing a Video
The resizing tools in the Photos app allow you to change how to present a video. You can choose from Straighten, Horizontal, and Vertical. The vertical size of the video is changed below:
Flipping and Rotating a Video
If you want to flip or rotate your video, Apple has you covered! In the following example, our video gets flips, then rotated:
Adjusting Brightness of Your Video
Just as you can with images, you can adjust the brightness of your videos in the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad. Increased brightness has been added to the video below:
Other Possible Adjustments
Brightness isn’t the only adjustment you can make to videos in the Photos app in iOS 13. You can also change the exposure, highlights, shadows, contrast, black point, saturation, vibrancy, warmth, tint, sharpness, definition, noise reduction, and vignette. There’s also an auto-enhance option that, when selected, does multiple adjustments behind the scenes to create a stunning effect worth considering. Each adjustment is found after tapping on the adjustment icon on the main video editing screen. Each is represented by an icon in the same section on the adjustment screen as brightness, as you can see in the examples below:
Adding Filters to Video
Using a filter on images has long been a popular choice for photographer’s post-processing. You can now add filters to videos too in the Photos app. There are currently 10 filters, including original, vivid, vivid warm, vivid cool dramatic, dramatic warm, dramatic cool, mono, silvertone, and noir. Here’s a look at three filters: vivid warm, dramatic cool, and noir:
Muting the Sound
Video, unlike images, usually includes sounds. If you’d like to turn the sound on your video off, you can do so easily in the Photos app.
Can You Remove Edits?
Edits made to videos (and images) in the Photos app are temporary if you want them to be. At any time, you can revert them to their original state. To do so: Note: If you made numerous edits to your video, instead of reverting to the original form, you could go back to a previous edit. To do so, tap on the video. To go back further, tap the video again and so forth. The number of taps available is based on the number of edits you made. On the final tap, you’ll see the original format for the video. Your video is now in its original format:
The Choice
The App Store offers lots of third-party video-editing solutions. Until now, using these was the only way you could edit videos on your iPhone or iPad. Not anymore. With iOS 13/iPadOS 13, you can use the same tools for image-editing for videos. For professionals, these tools probably won’t be enough as many of the third-party apps offer advanced features so far missing from the native app. Nonetheless, Apple’s solution is free, and no doubt, future software versions will add more features and options, so stay tuned!
