Quik is one of our favourite apps here at Journalism.co.uk, and as demand for video on social media platforms increases, we have been using it to promote our courses and newsrewired digital journalism event, as well as to accompany some of our written pieces – the example below is based on an article about how much freelance journalists earn.

Quik was previously known as Replay, and while the core purpose of the app has not changed, there have been some improvements and additional features added since GoPro acquired the app, alongside video editing app Splice, back in February.

Quik no longer places watermarks on videos and includes more automated editing styles than it used to, expanding the range of options you have to enhance footage taken on location, for example at an event, or to tease an upcoming story or project for your audience on social media.

To get started, download and open the free app on your iOS or Android device and tap 'create' to select and add your images and clips. If these were taken while your mobile had the location services activated, the app groups all footage taken in the same place and displays it accordingly, making it easier to find.

There is no limit to how many images you can add, although it is worth bearing in mind that the bigger the number, the trickier it will be to shorten your video and optimise it for platforms that might have restrictions on the duration of video.

Once the stills have been imported, Quik will automatically animate them using a default style, complete with transitions, music and effects. There are 28 styles to choose from, all of which can be tailored to your taste by changing the font and soundtrack.

For the purpose of this tutorial, I have chosen the Tender style and after previewing it with my images, I decided to tap the music note icon and change the music from a list of Quik suggestions, and because it had a rather slow start, I scrolled past the first couple of seconds of the track, which comes in handy if you feel only a specific portion of the audio fits your animation.

Next, I added some text in between the images to state the location of them along with the weather (text layers can also be reordered by holding and dragging if you change your mind, similar to the images).

Lastly, hit 'save' in the top right-hand corner, choose a format for the video between square and cinema (landscape), and tap the 'duration' icon next to it.

At this point, Quik will tell you how long your video is and displays a useful timeline at the bottom of the screen, where different times, in seconds, are marked with icons such as Instagram, or Quik's own, to give you an idea of the ideal duration depending on where you are planning on uploading the animation.

After that, you can export the video to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, send it via email or save it to your photo library.

Have you used Quik or any other apps for editing short videos for social media? Let us know if you have, or send us your videos made with Quick on Twitter, @journalismnews.

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