Vimeo's editing interface is clear and easy to use.
Without the YouTube app, you’d be unable to watch videos on that site with your iOS device, but Vimeo’s clips have been playing perfectly inside your web browser for a while, so why would they release an official app for it? After all, the app's browsing capabilities of this new piece of software aren’t very good -- it doesn't even have a search field. This is because the main purpose of the app is to let you edit your videos and upload them straight to your Vimeo account.
As a result, there are some limitations: you can’t use it with any device earlier than an iPhone 3GS and 4th-gen iPod touch. Just like Apple does with iMovie, Vimeo assumes that if it hasn’t got a video camera, you can’t edit with it. The app will work on the iPad 2, but the interface hasn’t been written to take advantage of the extra real-estate, so everything just gets huge and pixelated.
You can even experiment with a couple of video effects.
The editing part of the application is extremely nice and fluid. It's quite flexible: you can add clips to your timeline, resize them to keep just the parts you want, reorder them with ease, even apply one of two effects to them: Sepia or Heat (to create a Predator-like heat-vision effect).
You can apply titles of various size and color, position them anywhere on the screen and even have them span multiple clips. You can also insert an audio track -- with a choice of a handful of bundled music -- or record a voice-over. But strangely, you can’t access the music stored on your iOS device.
You can also watch Vimeo clips through the app, but without a search field, the Browse menu isn’t as useful as it could be.
Uploading is very straightforward, and there’s even an option to choose the quality of the video you’re sending to Vimeo. You can also save your project to your Camera Roll if you want to upload it elsewhere, like to MobileMe or YouTube.
The app has a few glitches, most strikingly its lack of auto-save. If you quit the app and restart it, you’ll be back where you left off. But if the app happens to crash, you might lose some of your work.
The bottom line. If you’re looking for a way to browse through and find videos to watch on Vimeo, stick with your web browser. As a video editor, however, it shows a lot of promise -- and best of all, it’s free.
iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, or 4th-gen iPod touch, running iOS 4.0.1 or later. Also runs on iPad 2 but not natively.
Free, easy to use, well-thought-out editing application with multiple options.
Browsing the online Vimeo library is crippled by the lack of a search field. Upload limited to Vimeo (which is an understandable limitation, but one we still wanted to note.) No access to your own music library. Only works on iOS devices equipped with a video camera. Prone to crashing.
stueee123
April 04, 2011 at 6:13pm
actually you dont need the youyube app at all, inuse the website of youtube on my ipad instead of the app, as i just keep it in the bookmarks bar, and its better because you can turn off hq if internets slow, and you can browse by category.
Steve Paris
April 05, 2011 at 2:25pm
That's the part that really confused me: I usually go to the app myself, but I was certain I could watch videos straight from MobileSafari, but for some reason, every time I tried to watch a video, all I got recently was an error and a request to install Flash... so I thought I had just been delusional and claimed that watching videos didn't work without the App.
Your comment made me look again and I now see what happened: if you go to youtube directly, you're sent to the mobile version where everything works as you expect... However, if you then click on the "Desktop" link, you're sent to the version that requires Flash and nothing works.
Also, if someone sends you a link to a video via email and you click on it, it sends you to the Desktop version, where you need Flash to view the clip.
Sadly the experience isn't consistent :(
