Apple Clips: Be a social media video star

With Apple Clips, the iPhone has become the default camera for a lot of people

It’s no secret that the iPhone has become the default camera for a lot of people. It’s also a known fact that short videos dominate social media. And a dip-stick survey among friends, colleagues and relatives led me to the conclusion that a lot of them were using their iPhones to post videos on social media. And with Clips, Apple has added the missing secret sauce.

Of course, not everyone is a Ray or Kurosawa, but all of us love videos which look cool. Starting up, the interface doesn’t look daunting; in fact it’s too simple for my liking. Hit the record button and it starts recording a video; switch on Live Titles, start speaking and presto, you have a video with subtitles as you speak. The first time I saw it, I thought it would need hours of training to get the subscription right. But when I first used it, I was impressed with the accuracy. A caveat: One needs a cellular or Wi-Fi connection for this to work, and don’t try it on our noisy streets!) And if you don’t want to keep the record button depressed, just swipe left on the button to “lock” into recording mode. But be careful with the way you swipe; I once deleted a clip by accidentally flicking them out of a sequence! 

Next, I went to the filters tab to have some fun. And so much fun I had, trying on different ones, especially the comic book and ink ones. The next tab took me to the emojis and bubbles, and my wife had a lot of fun sticking emojis all over my face. But every movie needs a beginning sequence and an end: Thus I clicked on the “T” for the opening title and the closing “credits”. While shooting, do keep in mind that Clips supports only the square format, so it’s best to not view your clip on your TV.

Once I was done “shooting”, I got into post-production. First, I looked at the sequence of clips, dragging and dropping to rearrange the sequence, while getting rid of some footage; I also added a few pictures from my phone, and a part of a particular video and also corrected a few errors in transcription. A caveat: Please mute the microphone while adding a photo, if you don’t want background noise to be recorded. 

But something was missing: A background score. And thankfully, Apple provides a vast repertoire of free scores, which would suit every occasion. But yes, the audio editing capabilities of Clips are somewhat limited. And while it’s not going to replace dedicated video-editing software, this has all you need for social media videos.

After sweating through a couple of weekends, my two-minute magnum opus was ready to go live. But I chickened out.