VideoBro / Editing & Playback
Edit the footage. Don't edit the life out of it.
Two tools, nothing else: swipe to delete, hold to trim. Then watch it back like a tape, not an editing timeline.
Two tools. That's the whole editor.
No editing timeline, no tracks, nothing to drag. Swipe to remove a clip you don't want, hold one you do to trim its start and end.
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Swipe to delete
Swipe a clip row left, the same way you'd clear an email. It's off the tape for good, no undo, unlike a trim. Any member can delete any clip, not only the person who shot it: it's a shared tape, so it's a shared edit.
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Press and hold to trim
Hold a clip for half a second and the Edit Clip sheet opens. Pull the Trim Video handles in from either end, watch the Duration readout change, then tap Save.
Nothing about the clip gets cut or re-encoded here. The trim is a note VideoBro keeps, start here and end here. It's applied later, when someone on the tape with an account taps Develop and turns everyone's clips into one finished film. The original, untrimmed clip stays on the tape while it's still busy, and clears 30 quiet days after that; the film itself is never touched.
Two handles and a duration. That is the whole trim.
The Active Tape already plays like one thing
You don't have to wait for Develop to see it come together. An Active Tape plays straight through, clip to clip, in recorded order, trims already honoured.
Tap any clip and it starts there, then keeps going into the next one. A running total in the corner of the preview adds up how much footage is on the tape so far.
Tap
Play or pause.
Double-tap
Full screen.
Rotate the phone sideways
Full screen too. Turn it back upright to exit.
Swipe left or right
Jump to the next or previous clip.
Hold the left side
Rewind at 3x, static and all, reading “◀◀ REW” even across clip boundaries.
Hold the right side
Fast-forward at 3x, reading “FF ▶▶”.
Every tape tops out at 2 hours, on every plan: the alert titled "This tape is full" reads "Tapes can hold up to 2 hours. Start a new tape to keep filming."
The finished film plays a little differently
Once a tape is Developed, the film lives in the Tape Cabinet with its own player: full screen by default, with the same shuttle.
Full screen, normal controls
A standard player with a scrubber, not a custom skin.
Hold to shuttle
The same hold-left-to-rewind, hold-right-to-fast-forward as the Active Tape.
A VCR counter, if you want one
Turn on VHS mode and a counter like 0:04:37 ticks up as the film plays. It's off by default.
There's no swiping between clips here: Develop folds every clip into one file, so the film plays as one thing, not a list. See what else the Cabinet does.
Why only two tools
Because the assembling already happened. Everyone filmed into the same tape and every clip landed where it belongs in time, so all that's left is taking out what shouldn't be there and tightening what should.
There's no reordering, no music and no titles because each of those is a decision, and on a tape with eight people on it somebody would have to make every one of them. With two tools, anyone on the tape can shape it in a spare minute, and nobody has to become the editor.
If you do want a scored, tightly cut piece, develop the film first and take it into an editor afterward: anyone on the tape with an account can save the finished film to their Camera Roll from the Tape Cabinet. The guide to making a video without hours of editing weighs that route against the others.
What you can't edit, on purpose
VideoBro adds nothing to your footage. The finished film is everyone's clips, re-encoded into one clean widescreen 1920x1080 file, in the order they were recorded, with no filters, no titles and no music laid over it.
The camcorder feeling comes from how the tape behaves, not how the picture looks: one tape, footage landing in the order it happened, a crew shaping it together. If you want the look as well, VHS mode is a switch for watching that never touches the file.
- No reordering. Clips play in the order they were recorded.
- No filters, titles or music. The film is the footage.
- No look baked in. VHS mode changes how a film plays, never the file.
Questions people ask first
Can I reorder my clips?
No, and that's on purpose. Clips play in the order they were recorded, not the order they were added or uploaded, so the tape plays back the way the day actually happened. There's no drag-to-reorder anywhere in VideoBro.
Can I undo a trim?
Yes, any time before you Develop. Reopen Edit Clip and move the handles again. The trim is only ever a note VideoBro keeps about where to start and stop; the original clip is never modified, and a trim can be changed again any time before the tape is developed.
Can other people edit my clips?
Yes. Trim and delete are shared: anyone on the tape can edit or remove any clip, not only the person who shot it. It's one tape everyone is shaping together.
Can I add music or titles?
No. Trim and delete are the whole editor: no filters, no titles, no music. The film is your footage, in order, nothing layered on top of it.
What does the finished film look like?
Widescreen, 1920x1080. Develop combines everyone's trimmed clips into one file, in the order they were recorded. It's a straightforward re-encode of your own footage, not a stylized version of it. If you want it to look like a tape, VHS mode does that at playback, on your phone or in the browser, without changing the film.
Can I edit the film after it's developed?
Not the film itself. For 30 days after it's developed, anyone on the tape with an account can tap Continue Editing, which puts the tape back on Active so you can trim, delete and add clips again, then Develop Changes for a new film. Until then the current film comes out of everyone's Cabinet, and there's no undo.
Will the film feel too polished, like an ad?
No, and that's deliberate. There are no filters, no titles, no music and nothing gets curated or ranked for you. The film is everyone's footage, lightly trimmed, in the order it was recorded, which tends to feel more like the moment itself than a produced highlight reel.
Can I make a keepsake from videos already on my phone?
Yes. Add Clips pulls in horizontal video already sitting in your camera roll, from any date, even from before the tape existed. It won't pull in vertical video. It can also open an iCloud Shared Album you're in and add videos from there, placed by the date saved with each one. Add what you already have alongside anything new, then Develop folds it all into one film.