The recently launched Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 is a great iPad editor, but it’s not the only one and it might not be the right one for you. Here are some excellent choices for professional-grade <a s processor.
Here are the five best video editors on iPad — and you don’t need an iPad Pro to get the most out of them.
Video editing apps have evolved into creation tools
Traditional Mac and Windows video editors are complex beasts with feature sets designed for television and cinema production. Mastering these programs can take years and often requires a lot of hardware to produce <a t work with files on an external drive. Before that release, users were generally limited to light editing work for projects saved on the iPad as you could only edit what you could fit in its internal storage.
iPad video-editing apps have been designed more for mobile social media than for television production. That’s not to say that an iPad video editing app can’t be used for a demanding TV job or cinema job.
Apple even edited its recent launch event using the new iPad Pro and Final Cut Pro for iPad 2, and it is meticulous in its productions. If Apple can use the iPad to create such polished productions, you can, too.
Types of video editors for the iPad
Some video editing apps for iPad have designed their interfaces to mimic their desktop counterparts, while others take a more consumer-focused approach.
The iPad’s touch-driven nature changes the interaction between editor and software, enabling a more interactive and sometimes more creative editing style. However, the iPad can’t use some common editing tools used in television and movie production, such as audio editing decks or editing tools like Blackmagic’s Speed Edit keyboard.
As a result of the iPad’s strengths and weaknesses, there is now a market where most video editors share common editing interfaces. You can click and hold <a s software limitations relative to the Mac have resulted in less powerful mobile editing tools than their desktop versions.
This category comprises applications that are versions of a Mac or Windows version and favor an interface resembling an existing product. This category has two-and-a-half “best” programs, which will make sense momentarily.
Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve for iPad
For DaVinci Resolve editors, the iPad version of the widely embraced Mac and Windows video editor is remarkable regarding feature parity. The iPad version includes nearly every tool found on the desktop version.
BlackMagic’s DaVininci Resolve for iPad is a faithful copy of the desktop version
DaVinci Resolve for iPad is compatible with some of Blackmagic’s dedicated editing hardware. The Speed Editor can be used with Resolve for iPad, for example, and the resulting experience is nearly identical to that on a Mac.
The result is a full-featured mobile video editing program that provides the power and sophistication of the Mac version.
The only drawback of this approach is that complex projects can become difficult to manage on a smaller screen than most desktop Mac users prefer. There is also a steeper learning curve for such a professional tool. With a user interface inherited from the desktop version, there’s a lot to conquer.
Once the interface is mastered, though, it becomes possible to use the same skillset on both versions for increased productivity.
Rountripping between the Mac, Windows, and iPad versions is simple, as both platforms can open and save project files. No other tool allows editing at such a collaborative and professional level across Mac, Windows, and iPad.
Blackmagic offers a cloud-based storage and project management tool called Blackmagic Cloud that automatically synchronizes work between multiple devices. Synchronization includes the timeline edits and the original footage, and the synch happens in the background.
Resolve’s iPad interface mimics the Mac and Windows versions.
A project edited on the iPad version can be opened on the Mac version from the cloud tool, with all of the media available, and vice versa.
Blackmagic also offers a companion iPhone app called Blackmagic Camera. Unlike the iOS camera app, which only offers rudimentary video controls, Blackmagic Camera offers every control and setting needed for professional capture. ISO, shutter speed, and other key settings can be adjusted on the fly.
