Lumify Review

Verdict

Pros

• Incredibly quick and easy to use

Cons

• Final video limited to 20 seconds

Platforms: iOS

What do festivals, football matches, holidays and birthday parties have in common? They’re all places where you’re likely to see someone with their iPhone held aloft shooting video. However, most people seem to be pretty content to just capture the moment and then do nothing with the resulting movie. It’s fairly rare that you see these videos shared around later.

Of course, part of the problem, as anyone who’s had to sit through a showing of someone’s holiday videos, is that unedited video can be extremely boring to watch. All that shaky camera work becomes tiresome. The other problem is that very few of us actually have the time to edit our videos into neat little packages that could be fun to share with mates via email or Facebook.

This is where Lumify comes in. It’s designed to take all the hard work out of video editing, making it ridiculously quick and easy to create a slick edit of your video handiwork.

When you start up the app it simply asks you to select the videos you want to use in your edit, or alternatively shoot some footage right there and then. Once you’ve got one or more videos selected you just hit the next button and you’re then asked to add a sound track. You can either use a music track that you’ve got stored on your phone or alternatively choose from four music tracks that the app has built in.

Once you’ve selected a track you can then preview your video. As the video is previewing you can swipe across the screen to switch between six different filters ranging from a documentary black and white look to the Lumicolor filter that adds a sort of Instagram look. When you’ve chosen a filter that’s pretty much it. You can save the video to your phone’s camera roll or alternatively upload it to Facebook.

The important thing, though, is that Lumify has some clever algorithms that scan the video to work out the most interesting bits to use in the edit and it actually does a very good job of this. However, all videos are edited into packages that are just 20 seconds long, so you’re not going to use it to create the next Saving Private Ryan. Nevertheless, the resulting clips are perfect for sharing on Facebook or just emailing to mates, so it does what it’s supposed to do extremely well.

Verdict
Lumify’s charm is that it’s just so quick and easy to use. If you’ve been wondering what to do with all those videos that you’ve got stored in your phone then it’s well work giving it a whirl.

Download: iTunes

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