iMovie for iPhone is one of the apps that Apple launched with the iPhone 4 in order to take advantage of its improved camera and HD video recording capability. The app allows you to easily edit together video clips shot on the phone, add transitions, titles and theme music, then upload the result to your favourite video sharing service.
Users of the Mac version of the software will instantly be at home with iMovie for iPhone. You start a new project by selecting a “theme” which defines the background music and transition effects. Choose from “Modern”, “Bright”, “Travel”, “Playful” or “News”. All of which are fine, but they don’t give you much flexibility, and instantly mark any video you produce as being made with iMovie.
Once you’ve selected your theme, it’s simply a matter of inserting media from your library or shooting video directly into iMovie. Your creations can also use photos and even music from your iTunes library.
Tapping on a clip in the timeline lets you trim it or add titles and transitions. It’s all very straightforward, but lacks a lot of the fine control you’d expect from a desktop video editing package. Don’t expect control over image settings or audio levels.
That said, for what it is, iMovie is a fantastic application. It’s great for short home movies, video podcasting on the go, or if you simply must get your hot party video onto Facebook before you get home.
Sample Video
Here’s a sample video I shot and edited on the iPhone 4 using iMovie:
As you can see, the main issue here is camera shake. With the iPhone being so small and light, some degree of shake is difficult to avoid, and iMovie has no stabilisation features at all.
If you can rest the camera on something while shooting, then it’s perfectly possible to produce great looking videos with iMovie, but it’s not a replacement for a decent PC or Mac application.
Pros
- Shoot, edit and upload movies on the go entirely from your iPhone
- Pretty good value
Cons
- Editing features quite basic
- Limited themes
- No image stabilisation features
