adobe spark video

What is it: A video editing app for making videos for social media on your smartphone.

Price: Free

Devices: iOS / desktop 

How is it of use to journalists?

Mobile journalists are always on the lookout for apps and tools to help them create quality video content with their smartphones – a process that was not easy to go through a few years ago. 

Apps such as Quik, iMovie and LumaFusion are just some of the tools now available to help reporters up their video skills, fit for the different purposes and needs of journalists out in the field.

Adobe Spark Video is a free app which helps iOS users produce engaging videos with minimal effort.

How it works:

Get started by logging into the app with your Facebook, Adobe or Google account details. Note that if you use your Adobe account details, Spark Video will automatically sync projects to your Adobe account, so you can start on one device and finish on another if you wish to. 

Tap the red plus icon at the bottom of the screen, and insert a project title to begin. You can pick a story template to work with or start from scratch. The templates, which include ’Teach a Lesson’, ‘An invitation’ and ’Show and Tell’, will help you select the type of content you should be uploading to fit your purpose, and how you should write the accompanying text.

Screenshot from Adobe Spark Video

Once you’ve selected a theme, start by adding a video or photo from your camera roll and trim it to the desired length – video clips can only be imported in 30 second chunks, so you’ll have to insert longer pieces of content twice. 

You will see your clips laid out as thumbnails at the bottom of the screen – tap, hold down, and drag your finger along the screen to re-order them.

Select the video or image you want to work on, and you’ll see it in the main viewer in the middle of the screen. You can add text onto the images by tapping the plus icon on the image, dragging it around with your finger to position it.

When you are happy with your video and its order, use the tabs at the top of the screen to play around with the style. Here, you can alter the layout or format of the video, which changes the colour and font type. 

You can also alter the size of your video, to either widescreen or square – your desired format will depend on the platform you’re publishing it on. 

Once you’re finished, you can add music from your device using the musical note icon, or add a voiceover by holding down the record button and speaking as the video plays. You can only record over one clip at a time, so make the voice clips less than 30 seconds long for each bit of narration. 

The app enables you to preview your clips and share directly to social media, or save the videos to your device.

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