Collect everyone's videos after a trip, in one place.

How can my friends and I capture and share our trip?

Everyone had a phone out at some point. The sunrise from the balcony, the wrong turn that became the best part of the day, the last night when nobody wanted it to end: it all got filmed, by somebody. The trouble is it got filmed onto five or six different camera rolls, and by the time everyone's home and back at work, nobody actually goes and asks for it.

So the trip just sits there, in pieces, on phones that will eventually get replaced. If you want to make something from all the videos your friends took, the honest first question isn't which app to edit in. It's how you're going to get the footage into one place before anyone forgets they have it.

How can we remember a weekend the way it actually felt, not just the ten photos somebody posted?

That's really a collecting problem, not an editing one. The five methods below are compared on how well each one actually gets everyone's clips together, because that's the part that decides whether you end up with something or with a group chat full of video files nobody opened.

Before, during and after the trip

Picking a method matters less than picking a moment to start. The five ways below are honest answers to "we're already home, now what," but the version of this that actually works starts earlier, in three plain stages.

Before: agree you're making one thing

The strongest move here isn't a collection method at all. Say it once, in the group chat, before anyone leaves: you're putting the footage into one thing afterward, and everyone should grab clips along the way. One sentence, sent before the trip instead of chased down after it, saves the entire collecting problem below.

Something to send before you go: "Can everyone grab some clips this weekend, nothing fancy? I'll put it into one thing when we're back, just send me whatever you've got."

During: let people film without asking twice

Nobody needs an assigned role, just permission. Say once that the boring footage counts too: the drive there, someone cooking, the ten minutes before dinner nobody plans to record. People film more, and more honestly, once they know it's actually wanted. Getting people to actually follow through once they've agreed is its own problem, covered in full on the getting people to contribute page.

After: gathering when nothing was agreed on

This is the situation most people reading this are actually in: the trip's over, nobody said anything ahead of time, and the footage is spread across four or five phones. A message to each person individually works better than one post in the group chat, since a request aimed at everyone tends to get answered by no one.

Something to send after: "Hey, can you send me your clips from the trip? Doesn't matter the size or how good, just AirDrop, text, or Drive me whatever you've got, even the boring stuff."

From there it's whichever route actually moves the files: AirDrop if you can still get everyone in a room, a shared album or cloud folder link dropped straight into the group chat, or just asking the one friend who always has their camera out to send their reel. Someone can also gather it on another person's behalf: Add Clips pulls in any horizontal video already sitting on a phone, from any date, several at once, so one person can AirDrop the group's footage to themselves and add it to a tape after the fact, and each clip still sits at the moment it was actually recorded.

How can a group of friends make one video together?

1. AirDrop everyone's clips to one phone, then edit

Free, fast, and the quality never moves. For two or three friends who are still together on the last night, hand a phone around, AirDrop everything onto it, and cut it together in iMovie or CapCut before anyone flies home.

It only works while you're all still in the same room. Anyone who already left, or whose phone was in a pocket during the AirDrop, sends their clips later by text, at whatever quality the message thread allows, and you're back to chasing people.

2. A shared iCloud album

Genuinely good at the collecting part. Anyone with an iPhone can add photos and clips from wherever they are, all trip long, without being in the same place as anyone else. If the goal is just to keep all your vacation videos in one place, this does that, and it's free.

Two catches. Apple compresses video in a Shared Album down toward 720p on upload, which shows if you plan to edit properly. And an album is an album, not a film: someone still has to pull the clips back out and cut them into something.

3. A shared Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive folder

The one to reach for if the group is a mix of iPhone and Android. Nothing gets re-encoded, everyone already has the app, and one person can download the whole folder at the end and start editing.

The cost is nagging. Uploads are slow on a hotel wifi, so people put it off, and someone ends up sending three reminders a week after everyone's home. It's also still a folder when you're done, not a finished video.

4. The group chat (texting or WhatsApp)

Everyone does this without thinking about it, and it's the worst option for anything you actually want to keep. Messaging apps re-encode video hard to squeeze it under a size limit, WhatsApp especially, plain SMS or MMS worst of all. A clip that looked sharp on the beach comes out soft and blocky by the time it lands in the thread.

It's fine for showing someone a moment. If you're trying to save memories from the trip, not just glance at them once, ask for the clips any other way.

5. Everyone films into the same tape from the start

This is the answer to "how do I make a shared video from a group trip" that most guides skip, because it isn't an editing step at all.

The first four methods all share one assumption: the footage gets shot into separate camera rolls and somebody gathers it up afterward. Once you accept that, every method spends its effort on the same chase, collecting clips after the fact instead of as they happen.

The other option is to skip creating the problem. Have everyone record into the same shared place while the trip is still happening, so there's nothing left to gather once you're home. This is what a VideoBro tape does, and it's why we built it instead of another editor.

Three phones, one afternoon, still in order

Clips are ordered by when they were recorded, not by when they finished uploading. Three friends filming the same afternoon end up as one timeline, in the order it actually happened, without anyone sorting anything by hand. A phone with no signal until dinner doesn't jump the queue when it finally catches up. There's no drag-to-reorder, on purpose: the tape already knows the order.

Three friends, one afternoonrecorded time →

4:004:014:024:034:044:05

Your phone

4:02

Marcus's phone

4:04

Jess's phone

4:03

on the tape

4:024:034:04

Dashed = uploaded last, from a phone with no signal at the timeIt still lands between 4:02 and 4:04

This is also how footage you already had gets folded in: it drops into the tape at the moment it was actually recorded, so the clip from the drive up and the clip from the last night line up as one timeline instead of getting tacked onto the end wherever they happened to be added. See everything about shared tapes for the full mechanics.

Questions people ask about collecting trip footage

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