3 free iOS apps to edit short videos for social media

Video posts on social networks often see more engagement than text-based entries, and posting short clips to Facebook or Twitter ahead of a longer story or alongside it help get the reportage in front of more potential readers or viewers.

Here are three free apps for iOS to help you trim, stitch together and record voiceovers for social videos straight from your mobile device. So if you're looking for new tools to share quick clips to your network when you're out in the field, check out the following recommendations.

All three are free to download, allow quick edits without any additional in-app purchases, and export videos without a watermark.

Splice

Use Splice to edit together video clips and photos, and quickly add audio tracks to the final result.

You can import photos and video from your camera roll, as well as audio from your iTunes account.



You can also choose from the sound clips available within Splice, or record a new voiceover through the app.

Once you're happy with the final video, you can upload it to various social networks such as Facebook, Vine or Instagram, share it via email, WhatsApp, Slack and other private messengers, save it to Dropbox or to your camera roll.

Trim & Cut

With Trim & Cut, you can edit a shorter clip from a longer video to share on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

The app can export videos as .mp4 or .mov, and the cutting process is a simple matter of choosing a start and end point for your video.



You can import videos from your phone or film within the app.

Once you have selected your short clip, tap 'trim' in the upper right-hand corner and the app will automatically save your video to camera roll. You can also cut out short clips from the middle of the video by tapping the second 'arrow' button at the top of the screen.

VideoLab

VideoLab also lets you record within the app – you could edit videos you have already filmed previously and even uploaded to Instagram or Facebook already.

It only produces square videos, so you will have to pan or zoom to adjust your footage to a 1:1 ratio.

Once you have cropped your video, you can add text to the footage as well as a voiceover – which you can record through VideoLab.

When you are happy with your final edit, you can even add filters or borders to videos before exporting, but if you are working on professional reports as opposed to videos for your personal accounts, these should be used with caution.



From within the app, you can share your edited footage to Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, Facebook Messenger, Vimeo, via text message, or simply save it to camera roll.

If you're looking to shoot and edit longer packages on your mobile device, check out this list of five free apps we put together recently, including Lumify, Magisto and Directr.

These on-the-go editing suites offer more editing options for enhancing your video footage, such as animations, storyboards and motion effects.

Update: This piece has been updated to include an extra feature available in Trim & Cut.

Free daily newsletter

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).