How To Edit Videos & Save Recording Sessions In Vine For Android & iOS

When Instagram brought video to its app, quite a lot of users and app reviewers, including myself, were convinced that it had a much more intuitive capture scheme compared to the then leader of the video sharing scene, Vine. Vine had absolutely no room for error. If you made a mistake, you had to redo the whole thing from the very beginning. More than just a few times, I’ve seen users and professional Viners alike complain about the lack of editing features. Well, Vine fans, it seems your voices have finally been heard. In its latest update, the Vine app for Android and iOS delivers both editing features and saving multiple recording sessions for later! The editing features, while not as snappy as those offered by Instagram Video, are definitely more powerful in comparison. Support for uploading videos from the Camera Roll / Gallery is still absent, though. Join us after the break to learn how the two new features work...

Saving A Session

Saving a session requires just a couple taps. While you’re recording a Vine, simply tap the ‘X’ button in the top-left corner of the screen and select ‘Save for later’ from the menu that follows.

 

You’ll notice a new button to the right of the controls at the bottom. This button shows the number of sessions that you have saved, and tapping it displays a carousel of preview thumbnails for all saved sessions along with a green bar atop each, showing the length of the recorded video.

Swipe left or right to switch between sessions, tap a preview to continue from where you left off or select the thumbnail on the extreme right to return to the recording screen without reopening a session. You can delete individual sessions by tapping the trash button in the bottom-left corner of their preview thumbnails.

Editing A Vine

Unlike Instagram, you can’t edit a Vine while you’re recording it. You’ll find the Edit option in the top-right corner of the preview screen that appears after you’re done recording a Vine. You can also enter the video editor at any time by tapping the green video progress bar at the top.

Vine’s video editor is quite similar to Instagram in that it deals in, let’s call them, ‘recording instances’. Every time you hold your finger down on the screen to record, Vine creates a recording instance. The editor displays thumbnails for each instance right below the preview area. So, if you held down on the screen, say, four times while recording a video, you should see four thumbnails.

 

Now, here’s where Vine has a definite edge over Instagram: the latter only lets you delete the last instance one at a time. In Vine’s video editor, you can drag the thumbnail of any around to rearrange it in the sequence or onto the trash bin at the top to delete it.

 

When you’re done editing, you can tap Save and proceed to the next screen to share the video or return to the previous screen to record some more.

You could record a bunch of instances, delete the ones that aren’t satisfactory, return to the recording screen to redo them and then rearrange your instances once again in the editor. Another interesting application of this feature – that some Viners have already started using it for – is to create videos that seem to play in reverse.

Needless to say, this is a huge improvement over the old recording scheme and a welcome change for the more creative users of Vine who spend more time than most on their videos.