VideoBro / Trips
Eight phones, one trip, one film.
Start the tape before you go, invite everyone, film from your own iPhones, watch it fill up. The trip comes home as one film.
Free on iPhone, with 2 GB to start. No trial, no card.
Everyone filmed. Nobody has the trip.
A week away, eight phones out: somebody filmed the whole hike up and never sent it, the ferry crossing is split across three phones that never line up, and the group chat is full of video files nobody's opened. By the time everyone's home, no one actually has the trip. Everyone has scraps of it, stuck on their own camera roll.
So how do you collect everyone's videos after a trip? Honestly, that's the part that tends not to happen, not once everyone is home and back at work. A tape solves it from the other end: it collects the footage as it happens, instead of waiting for someone to chase it down afterward. That's really the whole question behind "how can a group of friends make one video together": get everyone filming into the same place from the start, and there's nothing left to gather once a weekend away is over. See how the whole thing works, or read the longer comparison of ways to collect everyone's trip footage, including the ones that don't involve VideoBro at all. If it was really just you filming, not a whole group, here's the honest rundown of what to do with a phone full of trip clips.
Set it up before you leave
Four things, in order. The first one is a name and a tap.
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Start the tape at home, not at the gate
Tap New Tape and name it before anyone's packed: the dates, the place, whatever you'd write on the spine. Do it now and the first clip on the tape is the one at the airport, not the one from day two when somebody remembers.
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Invite everyone
Tap Collab, then Invite, and send the link however your group already talks. A tape holds up to 8 people, including you. Invite links work for 7 days, so send them the week you leave, not the day you create the tape. Starting a tape needs your account; joining one doesn't. Whoever opens the link on an iPhone can join and start filming right away, and any account holder on the tape can invite the rest of the group. More on how the crew works.
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Press ARM, film like normal
Tap ARM, then shoot with the iPhone Camera app everyone already carries. Every horizontal video shot while ARM is on lands on the tape by itself, uploading quietly in the background, and shows up on everyone else's phone, so the whole group watches the tape fill up while the trip is still going. Vertical clips don't get added.
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Add Clips for anything shot earlier
Someone joins on day three with two days of footage already on their phone. Tap + and pull it in. It doesn't land at the end: it slots into the tape at the moment it was actually recorded, alongside everyone else's.
Three phones on the ferry, still in order
Clips save to your phone first, so a missed signal costs you nothing: the upload catches up on its own once a connection comes back, even with the app closed. Clips are also sorted by when they were actually recorded, not by whose upload finished first, so a phone with no signal until dinner doesn't jump the queue when it finally catches up. Its clip still lands exactly where it happened.
A week away, eight phones: what to know first
A week of group filming can run past two hours, and two hours is the limit on any one tape. Plan for more than one before you leave.
Storage is the other thing worth a glance partway through the week, since a crew tape is the one place where somebody else's filming shows up on your bill.
- Run more than one tape at a time. A tape per car, per week, or per leg of the trip all work. Two hours of footage is the only length limit, per tape.
- Eight people per tape, including you. Same number on every plan. A bigger group runs more tapes rather than one crowded one.
- Everyone's uploads count on the owner's shelf. Every clip anyone films or adds to your tape uses your 2 GB, not theirs. Joining someone else's tape uses none of yours.
- Developing usually shrinks it back down. Once a tape is developed, only the finished film counts against the shelf, not the raw clips that made it.
- Nothing is ever deleted for running out of room. New clips stop landing, and Develop is blocked, until you clear space; the crew is told the owner is out of room.
Develop once, everyone gets the film
When the trip's over, anyone on the tape with an account taps Develop. Once everyone's clips have finished uploading you can close the app; VideoBro puts the film together in the cloud and sends a Tape Developed! notification when it's ready. What Develop does, exactly.
Everyone who was on the tape at that moment gets the finished film in their own Tape Cabinet. Anyone with an account can Share it with the people who weren't there as one link: it opens in any browser, on any device, no app and no account needed to watch it.
The raw clips behind the film stay so you can keep editing. Within 30 days of developing, the person who started the tape can use Continue Editing to reopen it. That takes the film out of the Cabinet for everyone still on the tape until you Develop again, and any share link you already sent stops working permanently: you'd Share the new film to send a fresh link. There is no undo. Otherwise, once the tape has gone 30 days with no clip added, removed or trimmed and no re-develop, the raw clips are cleared. Two emails go out first. The finished film is never touched. How Continue Editing works · What counts against your 2 GB.
Questions people ask before a trip
What if we don't have signal?
Keep filming. Clips save to your phone first and upload on their own once a connection comes back, even with the app closed. Nobody stands around waiting for a progress bar.
How many people can be on a trip tape?
Eight, including you, on every plan. If your group is bigger than that, run a second tape rather than squeezing everyone onto one: a tape per car or per week works better than one shared bucket.
Can we add clips we already shot before starting the tape?
Yes. Anyone on the tape can tap + and pull in footage already on their phone, from before they joined or before the tape existed. It lands in the tape at the time it was actually recorded, not tacked onto the end.
A friend is on Android. What can they do?
They can't film into the tape: that needs the iPhone app. They can watch the finished film in any browser on any device, with no app and no account, once you send them the share link.
How long can a trip tape be?
Two hours of footage, on every plan. Across a week and eight people that works out to roughly fifteen minutes each, and if you need more than that, start another tape rather than trying to stretch one.
How can my friends and I capture and share our trip?
Start a tape before anyone packs, invite the group, and have everyone turn ARM on and film with their own iPhone. The clips land together automatically as the trip happens, the tape fills up on everyone's phone as you go, and once you're home anyone on the tape with an account develops it into one film to share.
How do we keep all our vacation videos in one place?
Put everyone on one tape instead of collecting from separate camera rolls afterward. Every horizontal clip anyone films while ARM is on, or adds from before the trip, lands on that same tape in the order it was actually recorded.