Workflow for iPad video editing

October 29, 2014 5:08 AM

I work with high school students who all have iPads. Because the ipad is so handy, and because iMovie is so easy to use, I want the students to edit their video projects on the ipad. Currently they use adobe premiere on desktop computers. I am not having any success finding simple solutions to this.

Here are the facts:

1) Video is generated from DSLRs, iphones, and ipads.
2) We currently store video on an external hard drive that we all share.
3) When video was shot on the ipad, editing a quick movie was super easy and fast.
4) We have a camera connection kit, but taking stored video (ie, from last month/year) and putting it on an SD card (and then importing into an ipad) is laborious and uses up tons of time.
5) We have a drop box account, but the workflow of uploading and then downloading takes forever. The transfer process is very slow, and this is at a school with a great internet connection.
6) Same deal with youtube. I figured we could just use their rudimentary editor, but the upload process takes forever.

I feel like I must be missing something. Is it really this hard to use such a well-designed and ubiquitous device? Is there an app or website that everyone (but me) knows about?

(With all of the gopros and iphones out there, how are millions of people editing their millions of youtube videos? My co-teacher says everyone is using their macbooks.)

posted by yet.another.boston.question to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

You would use iPhoto to move the videos over to the iPad, so import them on the computer first. This makes for easier workflow and file management anyway.

I would question your premise a bit though. It the kids have access to Premier forcing an iOS iMove workflow is going to produce inferior movies. iMove for iOS is great for short clip movies and for quick edit movies. I worked for a newspaper and we did this for on-the-scene videos and quick uploads. Everything else was done back in the office.

iMovie for iOS works great for clips where you don't want b-roll and added sound, but for most things I would use an external editor. iMovie for iOS is best for the clips you shot with that device. You can do all kinds of dumb things like emailing yourself sound files for VO work and such, but doing it on a desktop is going to be much easier.

From an educator's viewpoint this also increases the "transferable skills."
posted by cjorgensen at 5:58 AM on October 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

Have you tried using some kind of File Explorer app on the iPads to access the external? Something like this:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/fileexplorer-free/id510282524?mt=8

You may have to share the drive from a machine that's on the network as an SMB share as per this post:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6001117
posted by Mr Ed at 6:06 AM on October 29, 2014

Why not use Splice as a video editor on the iPad? It's simple, exports to camera roll and can input multiple clips.

Once the footage is edited down a bit, you can export it into iTunes (which takes care of weird formatting and size issues) and then you have less raw footage to deal with.

It doesn't solve the overall workflow issue, granted. And yes, my answer is "get a MacBook." I teach 6th grade at a school that is 1:1 with MacBooks and video editing is MUCH easier because of iTunes. I also personally use Camtasia (again, much cheaper for Mac than PC) which has direct integration between iPhone/iPad using the app Fuse and can also import directly to Google Drive (and you can upload videos from your camera roll to Google Drive in the iPad app).

I don't know that there is an easier way, especially with "PC" as your complicating factor.
posted by guster4lovers at 5:45 PM on October 29, 2014