I’m covering my favorite phone video editors that I use. They are all free to download! I’ll cover the pros and cons of each one. They’re different enough that you could use all 3 together for different types of videos you make.
Last week: iMovie - iOS version
Previously: VN Video Editor
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This week: Adobe Premiere Rush
Link: Adobe Premiere Rush
Hey everyone,
I’m on the last week of my mobile editing apps series but realized this hasn’t been thoroughly explained. So I’ll start with this question:
Why mobile first?
When learning anything new, it’s best to start small. In my opinion, the best video editor out there is Adobe Premiere Pro, but it can be complicated at first, so why not start with the lighter, mobile version? For comparision, here is a basic video I was working on in Adobe Premiere Pro:
Editing on your phone is simple because smart phones are designed to be simple. Shooting a video on your phone is convenient and consequently, editing a video on the same device is also convenient.
If you want to learn to edit videos, you should start by editing short videos on your phone.
Premiere Rush
Once you get into Adobe Rush and start a new project, you can add media straight from your phone’s camera roll or library. I was impressed how many clips I could add all at once. The app dumps them all in a row in the timeline.
In the timeline, my phone screen was divided into two sections, with the timeline along the bottom half and the preview in the top half. The toolbar is a long scroll along the bottom.
Extra video tracks and graphics!
One thing that’s nice to see is the ability to have so many video tracks. This way, you can move your video clips around easier, and you can add photos and graphics on top as well.
Rush comes with a lot of templates for almost every occasion. I was blown away by how easy it was to add text, edit it and move it around the screen to where you want it to go.
My only issue with Rush is that the preview window seemed small at times, but it’s not a huge deal because there’s a…
Desktop version
The desktop version is pretty much the same as the mobile version, just with more screen space.
*HOWEVER* I should mention that unless you upgrade to Premiere Rush, your mobile and desktop versions don’t sync. Which could be worth it, because there were a few times where I needed to make a very precise edit on my phone and it would’ve been nicer to edit with a keyboard and mouse.
But designed for mobile
Rush is still intended for mobile. When selecting your project file size, you can choose between the 4 common social media video sizes:
When exporting, it gets saved as an .mp4 file, which I appreciate it since that’s the most versatile video file and other video editors on iPhone tend to save the file as Apple’s .mov file, which adds an extra step for me because I have to convert to use somewhere else.
Rush saves your video to your camera roll and then send it directly to social media sites, like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok. It also has an option to send to Behance, Adobe’s social media platform to share creative work.
Summary
If you plan on “graduating” to a bigger editor but want to try editing on something easier, it’s good to start with Rush. It may not be identical, but the ideas are the same. Adobe designed it to be the “on the go” version and while it does make me want to edit on the big Premiere Pro instead, it’s a good tool to have in your pocket.