The Value of Adding Video Recording & Editing Features into IOS/Android Mobile Apps

In 2021 alone, the use of video recording and editing to market products and services has increased by more than 41%. Why? Videos are engaging, dynamic, and are easy to consume and digest by customers. Videos can help marketers generate more leads, increase brand awareness, and increase sales volume because customers would rather watch a video than read text. By adding video and editing functionality features to your Canada or USA business app, you can create a stronger brand with greater user retention. In this article, we will talk about the best practices for adding video functionality based on industry type and platform type.

How Is Video Recording & Editing Functionality Useful to Business?

By adding video recording and editing functionality to your IOS/Android mobile app repertoire, you can not only increase traffic to your website, but generate more leads which increases sales. You can also help customers understand your products, your services, and your business better.

Video & screen recording tools allow you to:

• Create how-to videos and tutorials for your business.
• Create interactive product demo videos.
• Create videos that show off your products or services.
• Communicate to your customers through video calls/messages.
• With video editing tools, you can do the following:
•  Create slow-motion or fast-forwarding videos.
• Add voice overs, music, text, and subtitles to your videos.
• Compress videos as needed or cut out/rotate content.
• Merge videos together.

Why Adopt Video & Recording Functionality into Your Mobile Apps?

Whether you are a small business in Canada or a large franchise in the USA, your business can benefit from adding video and recording functionality into your mobile apps. In doing so, you can add features that are tailored specifically to your business’s purpose. For instance, here is how you can tailor video recording and edit to businesses within certain industry sectors.

1. Healthcare Industry: due to the Covid-19 pandemic, more and more virtual doctor visitors are being booked via video communication through telehealth services. Videos ensure that patients are safe, patient monitoring can be done remotely, and that relationships can be maintained between patient and doctor. By adding video recording and editing to your healthcare application, you allow therapists, doctors, and general practitioners to create videos to educate their patients on certain health issues.

An example of this would be with CaptureProof, a telehealth company that allows patients to send videos and images to their doctors to show how their treatment is progressing. It also allows patients to get advice on visible injuries.

Another example of this would be the mental health app, Talkspace, that allows users to get in touch with therapists through live video sessions. Patients can also send an unlimited number of video messages to their therapists outside of live sessions.

2. Education Industry: in the education sector, teachers are able to use video editing and recording software via mobile applications to create personalized tutorials, how-to videos, and educational talks that provide informative information to their students. If you are running an education app, you could add in the ability to create animated videos that come with templates for easy and quick creation. A great example of this is Screencast-O-Matic which allows teachers to create tutorials and educational videos with music, narration, and text overlays. It also allows teachers to provide ongoing mentorship and communication with students. Another example of this is Edpuzzle, which helps teachers create and upload video lessons for their students.

3. Real Estate Industry: for the real estate industry, real estate agents can record and save videos of property to show off to potential buyers. They can use video to increase property sales by offering tours, walkthroughs and other types of property footage. A great example of this is HomeRover, which is a mobile app for real estate agents who want to virtually show off properties and invite participants to the open house. These showings can then be replayed for others.

Another great example is Realtor.com itself, which has a mobile iOS/Android app for individuals looking to purchase a new home. Homebuyers can browse videos and photographs per listing, schedule a call with a real estate agent, or schedule a video consultation that shows off the property.

As you can see, regardless of what industry your business is in, video recording and editing functionality can help you achieve diverse goals. The main thing that video brings to the table is the ability to eliminate obstacles and simplify the process of communicating. If you need mobile app development in the areas of video recording and editing, read on to find out what type of capabilities each platform offers you.

Video Functionality & the IOS Platform

The IOS platform has fantastic capabilities when it comes to video functionality due to the native AVFoundation framework. This framework allows developers to implement almost any kind of video editing and recording functionality into mobile apps. Here are some examples of top-performing IOS apps that take advantage of this framework.

1. iMovie. We’ve all heard of iMovie – Apple’s flagship product. It gives users video filters, animated titles, soundtracks, and 14 different trailer templates. Users can import and share 4K videos, adjust colors, change intensity of filters, and even customize the background color of their videos.

iMovie allows users to store video clips made with the app in their own Photos library so that they can transfer them as needed via iCloud or Airdrop. This gives users the ability to edit their videos on any Apple device that has iMovie. Beyond this, iMovie allows users to trim videos, add filters, add images, and soundtracks, save and share in standard dynamic range or high dynamic range.

2. Splice. This is a minimal yet powerful IOS video editing app that combines simple usage with sophisticated functionality. Users import videos into the app for editing, mark the portions of the video that they want to use, and the app automatically compiles the video based on your selections. The app isn’t overloaded with video editing functionality, making it quick and easy for individuals to create presentations or document work projects. It comes with a wide range of filters and sound effects.

Video Functionality & the Android Platform

While there are plenty of video editing applications on the Android mobile platform, it does not have its own native solutions for video editing and recording. This is due to software and hardware limitations that Google attempted to fix but eventually abandoned. In the absence of a native solution, there are applications like KineMaster and VivaVideo that get the job done, just not as well as IOS apps.

KineMaster is a video editor that allows you to download media, effects, doodles, and overlays onto your videos. While VivaVideo is much more robust, giving users access to 200 filters, stickers, themes, text arrangements and transitions for their videos. You can also film live content and apply special effects in real-time. If you are in need of mobile app development like KineMaster or VivaVideo, the company you hire to create your app will need to use FFmpeg Multimedia Framework.

While the app solutions listed above are good for creating video content, they do have drawbacks like video length limitations and exporting with watermarks. Beyond this, users may need to opt into paid services to remove watermarks and increase video length and storage options.

Hardware Considerations to Make When Building Video Functionality Into Your Mobile App

For businesses that need mobile app development, a key thing to look at are the hardware breakthroughs in the latest Apple and Android smartphones. For instance, Apple’s iPhones are famous for giving users the ability to create slow-motion videos, but Android now offers this on higher-end devices like the Sony Xperia 5 II and the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.

When choosing which type of device to build your video recording and editing functionality around, determine if you want to offer 4K HDR resolutions at 120 FPS or 960 FPS. An example here is the iPhone 12 Pro Max can record at 1080p at 120 FPS or 240 FPS, whereas, a lot of Android phones can’t hit this quite yet due to limited hardware capabilities.

How to Make It Easy for Users to Generate Fantastic Videos

Make it effortless for your users to use your video editing and recording functionality. For example, those who do not have the time to sit and edit their own videos frame by frame, would prefer to use an app like Magisto, which does all of the editing and trimming via the back-end. Users simply choose which theme and soundtrack they want to use, and the app does all the work for them. Users upload the video, select the editing style, and wait for the video to be returned to them.

In Conclusion

Incorporating video recording and editing into your Canada or USA business app can allow you to increase sales, generate more leads, and increase customer satisfaction with your products. If you need mobile app development of this nature, consider choosing a company that has extensive experience in building and implementing video capabilities into existing applications specifically, as this will ensure you get functionality that works as you need it too.