Today I will talk about my favorite Android movie editor like iMovie which I have been using since 2014. Even if you only need a video editing app for YouTube, you will find that this Android app will offer you a lot of features that will make your videos look gorgeous, even with the free version. There is a Premium version with some pretty awesome perks, too. So if you are looking for an easy way to pull in your video footage and do your video editing on your Android device, I will run through some great mobile video editing apps today, including my favorite free video editor that I have been using for half a decade. This will be especially valuable if you just switched from iPhone to Android and are looking for an iMovie alternative for your Android.
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Relevant Links
Power Director App By CyberLink
Full Episode Transcript
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by a tool I highly recommend called called Happy Scribe (affiliate link). We do our best to adjust the transcript so that it reads smoothly, but if we missed something please forgive any typos or errors.
| Hello, everyone, this is Leslie and I am ready to rock and roll today, it is raining out and it’s been raining for the last three days, but for some reason I’m in a super peppy mood. So let’s get going. Today, we’re going to talk about an Android movie editor alternative like iMovie. And the reason why is because a lot of people are used to iMovie. I don’t know about you, but my setup is Mac computers. But I use an Android phone and I love that decision. I have helped relatives that have iPhones and I personally did not like working on an iPhone. It was not the first version of the iPhone, which was like a decade ago… more over a decade. But more recently, after using an Android for over a decade as a smartphone, I just was like, “I can’t deal with the iPhone. I just don’t understand it. It’s not intuitive like what I think the Androids are, as opposed to computers where I find Mac computers incredibly intuitive.” So that’s just a side note, but that’s how I’m working. So I realized that some people are looking for an Android movie editor like iMovie and I’m here to talk to you about what my solution is and to tell you why I choose that solution. So I’m going to start by saying if you go to the Play Store in Android… Oh, if you’re an Apple user, you know, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m sorry, I this is for Android users primarily, and I’m sure you have a fantastic solution. Like maybe there’s iPhone for your cell phone. I’m sorry, iMovie for iPhone. iMovie for your cell phone, which would, I guess, be a solution. But if you’re switching to an Android after you’ve been on an iPhone for a while, here’s the thing… You look for a video maker. And so way, way back… Well, today… We won’t talk about way, way back yet… Today I was just like, “Let’s look at video editors because let’s have this conversation.” I don’t personally need one, but let’s see what there is. So there were a lot of choices, good choices with high ratings, like in the 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, even 4.8. So you might find something that works that is a better solution for you. Like I saw one called “Video Maker for YouTube”. A lot of people are oriented toward YouTube, not filmmaking. So I haven’t used any of these and I don’t know if they’re even appropriate for YouTube. They might not be appropriate for doing high-end filmmaking. And that whole thing where you are having to add in color-correction and taking out the green screen and all of that. But some of them with high ratings are the “Video Maker for YouTube”… That’s one that’s the title of one of them… Another one is “Video Editor for YouTube and Video Maker”. It’s a really long title. “YouCut” was another one. And there were a number of other ones listed. And in the blog post that goes with this, I will link to a few of them. But the first link that you’re going to come to is one called Power Director, and it’s from a company called CyberLink. As you listen to this, just know I am a fan of this company. My DVD burner that I burned my last movie on that I made, I used their software and their DVD burner and it came out really well. It was very easy software to use. I was frustrated for a long time that they didn’t have software for the Mac to edit on, like on my Mac computer. And this just changed. They do have software and I’m probably going to do a whole podcast about that. But we’re talking about Androids right now and cell phone editing. But I liked their cell phone editor so much that I wanted it for my computer because I wasn’t happy… Well, I can’t say I wasn’t happy with Final Cut and Premier Pro, but I just didn’t feel like paying for them. And then I got very into DaVinci. But at the time, this is back in 2014. I was having frustrating tech issues with DaVinci. Today it works great. I love DaVinci. It’s a little bit hard to get into. It’s a little bit complicated, but once you’re there it does a great job. But in 2014, there weren’t a lot of options in the Play Store for video editors and there also weren’t a lot of software that I wanted to edit on. My Premier Pro… Once they went to subscription… I don’t like subscriptions. I’m very picky about them because I find that over the year I’ll just be like, “Oh, I have to pay for that again. Crap.” And so I try to do, like lifetime deals with a lot of these softwares because it frustrates me to have to think about paying a company, especially if I let the software sit for six months. I’m like, “I’m paying for this and I’m not using it.” That’s always a frustration. So I didn’t like the high price of getting the Adobe subscription because $50 bucks, it’s not that… Again, I think I talked about this when I was talking about tripods because it’s not like… OK, I can totally afford $50 bucks. But when you’re running a business and you’re looking at the final tally at the end of the month or at the end of the quarter and you go, “I’m paying for this and I’m not using it. And I have all these monthly costs and I have all these quarterly costs, annual costs”. It can eventually add up and it sometimes is a surprising amount. And so eliminating that where I get to pick when I’m paying for something again is a much better feeling for me. I’m not saying I don’t do it with anything. And actually CyberLink… Their Mac software, which, by the way, I haven’t bought yet because I’m like… I don’t need it, not yet. I’m using DaVinci, but if there’s a moment where I need the software that CyberLink has newly made for a Mac desktop, I will invest in that because it looks awesome. Before this year… Before the last few months… That was only for PCs. And that bummed me out. So before I get further into Power, Director, which I’ve been using since 2014, maybe earlier, I want to talk about… ONE. I don’t like iMovie. I made a video, a WHOLE video about why I don’t like iMovie, but I understand that it’s a very easy thing to start using as a beginner. I don’t like the way they hold the files, but I’ve never liked the way Apple holds their files. I don’t use iPhoto, I don’t use iTunes, I don’t use any of that stuff because they put it into a proprietary format. And yes, you can use non-proprietary formats, but it just gets muddled in that, you know… You click on your iTunes Library and yeah, I know that all the folders have… I’m talking about music right now. I know that all the folders have the [exportable] files in there, but I’ve gotten frustrated where I’ve had to log in to get a song and I can’t put it on my Android phone. So I’ve really shied away from a lot of iMovie or Apple software because they always put limitations on that. And if I bought a song, I don’t want to have to buy it again in order to put it on my Android phone, so I’ve just basically walked away from that whole ecosystem. So I don’t like iMovie because there’s a folder and a folder and then you have a project. And it seems crazy to me, and this is coming from very complicated software. One would [think], for a beginner, [that would be challenging.] I know when I was learning Final Cut Pro and when I was learning Premiere Pro, there is a certain setup that you need to do in order to make it sensible when you are editing movies. But there’s a second layer to that that even complicates it more in iMovie. And sometimes I’m surprised that that’s a choice that beginners make for software, except that it comes with the computer. But to me, it complicates things when you want to move things around. And there was a point where I was making a movie… I was making a video every day, and it just ate up data space on my computer. And I realized at the end of the 90 Days [of making videos every day]… I’m like, “Oh my God, this is an iMovie issue”. So that’s a no. [TWO] I don’t like editing… This is the second thing… I don’t like editing on my phone. It’s too small a screen when you’re used to working on a big space, so I generally avoid using my iPhone- My iPhone? I don’t have an iPhone! I’ve never had an iPhone. I avoid using my cell phone to edit, but this [Power Director] is the best solution. So to run through fast…Power Director: discovered it in 2014. It is the “Editor’s Choice”, in the Play Store. It, you know, worked really well even for 2014. It was… Everything looked really nice, I was able to do these beautiful lower thirds and titles and everything that were motion graphics. And it looked lovely, you know, and the only frustration was working on a tiny screen. But I really liked it and compared it to DaVinci [at the time], which was having a lot of technical issues. The render… So the output, the final video would have synching issues with the audio so that it wasn’t synched in. The lips were moving, but nothing was coming out. And then it would come out like a second later. So that was… So I ended up relying on cCyberLink’s Power Director for a long time. So I just want to say that in the time between now and 2014, it’s [Power Director] even gotten better and it has stayed relatively simple. So it’s something that a beginner could pick up and go, “OK, I got this”. I do recommend reading the documentation because it helps you use it at a higher level and you’re going to need that anyway if there are certain things you want to do that you can’t just intuitively understand and get just from the user interface. But overall, it’s pretty self-explanatory, and they’ve kept that despite getting more technical and adding more features. So some of the things it does… It’s a stabilizer, which when you’re shooting with a cell phone is important unless you’ve got it on a tripod… Your cell phone, on a tripod… Then you’re going to need to use stabilization a lot of the time if you’re walking with the phone while you’re shooting. It has a chroma key. So you can eliminate [the green-screen background] and this is all free. The free features, like you can eliminate that green screen, you can do blending features where you’re blending one shot with another. There are a number of other things. I’m not going to run through everything, but I’m pretty impressed with just the free features. Very good. Now, when you bump up to the Premium, which I had for a year, but they didn’t have these features [at the time]. The coolest thing about it, which they didn’t have when I was a Premium user, is they now give you access to Shutterstock, which they now either collaborate with or own, I’m not sure. But they do have access to Shutterstock. And that’s really cool because now you can use some stock video that you didn’t have access to before. And that can be very, very useful with certain projects. I mean, if you’re shooting your own movie, that’s unnecessary. Although maybe it isn’t. And if you’re shooting a movie and it’s meant to be set in New York and you want to get an aerial shot of New York, you might be able to pull that from Shutterstock. And then that implies… It adds value, cinematic value, because it looks like an expensive shot. But now you’re getting it through your software that you’re using to edit your movie. So that’s the one thing that I think is fantastic about it. The other thing is, obviously, if you’re using Premium or not, it eliminates ads because they do put ads on their free version. And you just get a lot more packs to use that are bump-ups in either editing quality, or like filters or things like that. But you still have plenty in the free version. I think you can also… I know back when I was using it, you know, because I was using it heavily until about 2017, and then I went to desktop because I’m like, “Oh, I’m doing too much complicated stuff on my phone”. But even then you could buy a [styling] pack that would add a certain filter look that you might want, that might not be available [in the free version] and it wouldn’t be that expensive. It’d be like a few dollars. So the price is really reasonable compared to other editors, and that’s why I like it. And even then, it sometimes goes on sale, too, so if you sign up for their newsletter, you will get informed about that. And there was a great sale Black Friday for the desktop software, for Mac editing. And I didn’t get it, mainly because I didn’t need it. But maybe I’ll buy it and I’ll do a podcast blog post about that. I’m pretty happy with the software I’m using. So for me to sum up it’s DaVinci [Resolve] on my desktop, and then on my phone, it is Power Director by a CyberLink. And it’s been Power Director by CyberLink since 2014 and I have used it for run-and-gun things. I used it when I was in Los Angeles last time when I was biking everywhere. And I was talking about how that looks because as an “environmental city”, they have not made it very safe or convenient to bike everywhere. And I did a whole series of me biking all over Los Angeles, and that was all edited with the Power Director. And so, you know me. If you’ve been listening, you know I’m an environmentalist. So it was an experiment. [For] The last job I went out to in Los Angeles, I’m like, “I’m going to bike everywhere and I’m going to document it. And I really want to see if this, you know, state that claims to be all environmentally oriented and everything is really what it is.” And it was a nightmare doing this. It was so dangerous. It was like I couldn’t go out at night because I was either going to get hit by a car or just… I’d be going through tent cities and you could smell the poop and the pee. And I… It’s just… L.A. is not the city I lived in. The L.A. now is not the city I lived in when I left a decade ago. But that’s a whole other story. If I can find those videos, I will post them*** because it’s kind of an interesting thing. That is about it. (*** I could not fine them and actually I never posted them because I got busy and never finished the project. ? ) So to sum up, have plenty of choices on Android to, you know… There are plenty of Android movie editors like iMovie that you can choose from that have great ratings. So they’re probably awesome. And I recommend Power Director app by CyberLink. I can’t remember if I am an affiliate. So if this sounds like a giant commercial, I’m doing this because… OK, I’ll just tell you, I do keyword searches for what people need to know, you know. Like what are people asking about. And there are a lot of people asking about this. So I’m like, “I’ll talk about what I use and what I like”. And so that’s where that came from. And so I have been using it since 2014 and I’d been very happy with it. And aside from editing on a really small screen, which would be the truth with any [cell phone] editor, it’s fantastic. And I am going to leave it at that. So thank you for listening. I hope you have a fantastic day and I will talk to you soon. |
