Filmr: World's Most Intuitive Mobile Video Editor

Project Background

This classy project’s customers are two professional surfers — twin brothers from Brazil. Having loved surfing since they were kids, one sunny day they began capturing their runs on camera. This was 20 years ago (or as the kids today like to say, “The Dark Ages”), when there were no mobile video editors. Some existed for desktop, but their availability was limited. And so in order to create videos with music in the background (the surfing version of a music video), the brothers cranked up their favorite CDs while filming their escapades.

When multiple video editors became available, our clients stopped taking their CD player to the beach. They began sampling lots of video editing apps, but according to them, these were overly complex: too many buttons, settings, and features. Solving a very simple task, i.e. cutting out the best piece of footage and applying music to it, required a user to undertake numerous steps before sharing it via social networks (that is, if he had the stamina to go through the lengthy editing process). Thus, the brothers decided to create a video editing app of their own — not just for personal reasons, but also because it was a good chance to ride the wave of video content’s rising popularity, which incidentally is still rising as it replaces static images.

Solution

When the brothers approached Sibers, they already had an app called Stey, available for iOS and Android. Stey allowed users to shoot short videos, supplement them with music, and share the videos with users inside the app — a sort of “social network for surfers”.

We first spoke with the brothers on Upwork in June 2016, and they asked about Sibers making some fixes to their Stey app. Three months later, our collaboration had progressed so well that they decided to revisit the idea of how the app should work (changing it from a social network to a comprehensive video editor). They were already very comfortable working with us, and asked our team to redevelop the app from scratch for the two biggest mobile platforms: iOS and Android.

And we did it! Today, the brand-new Filmr offers users two choices: either take video pieces from the device, or record video right from the app. If recording from the app, the user has three modes to choose from: normal, fast, and loop. “Loop” is similar to what the Boomerang app does, but with Filmr users can record video of any length, regulate its speed, and integrate background music. Adding one’s personal tunes can be done through the user’s Music Library, or from iTunes (for both platforms, iOS and Android). In the latter scenario, users can select a free 30-second sample of a track, or buy the full song. After adding sound, the user can then mix the music volume with the ambient volume.

Of course, the user can also easily split, trim, zoom, rotate, change speed, reverse, crop to full screen, square (for Instagram) or 9:16 (for YouTube, Vimeo), and share videos via social networks and/or save them locally. The only in-app purchase allows the user to remove watermark from the videos he creates using the app.

Ohhh right, we did say something about how the customer wanted something simple to use. And we agree with what you’re probably thinking: this app sounds feature-rich and maybe a bit complicated to use. But trust us, it only sounds that way!

In actuality, Filmr is an extremely easy-to-use intuitive video editor, with two secrets: a vertically-oriented design (which describes how video pieces are arranged on the timeline), and one-page architecture, which means that every feature (including the video) is available on one page, always in the user’s sight.

Not included among these “two secrets” are two cherries (mmmm… cherries) which top this delicious app sundae. The first cherry is an “Instagram Stories” feature that automatically splits the video into 15-second clips when clicking on “share via Stories”, allowing the user to publish the whole film piece-by-piece. The second cherry is a delightful Augmented Reality (AR) feature, which as of Q1 2018 is only available for iOS. While editing their video, users can play with AR, adding awesome 3D moving characters like unicorns, aliens, dwarves, and many more personas who are happy to feature in the user’s film. (Note: The AR feature is available starting from iPhone 6S onwards with iOS 11, since it functions with ARKit).

Using Filmr on an iPad is even cooler due to the multitasking and drag-and-drop features that are available starting with iOS 11. While the app is open, a user can, for example, find inspiration in a YouTube video opened near the app, or drag-and-drop pics to his movie from a website opened in Safari.

Tech highlights

• iOS: Objective-C, Swift, Realm, Fabric, Crashlytics, AFNetworking, AVFoundation, Firebase, ARKit, SceneKit, ReplayKit, OneSignal, Facebook SDK, FBSDKShareKit, FBSDKLoginKit, FBSDKMessengerShareKit, UXCam, iTunes RSS feed API
• Android: Android Media API, OpenGL, Musicg library, Android NDK, sonicNDK, libresample, ExoPlayer, ARCore, ViroCore, Android Support Library, Firebase, Fabric, Crashlytics, UXCam, OneSignal, Picasso, Glide, Google Play Services: play-services-ads, RingProgressBar
• Social Network APIs: Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter

Results

Within six months after its release, Filmr was featured on the App Store 100+ times (50+ on both the iPhone market and the iPad, specifically), and was promoted via iTunes’ homepage banners and on Apple’s “Apps we love” list on a global level.

What’s more, in autumn 2017 Apple came to an agreement with our client to make a special build so that Filmr could be preinstalled on demo devices displayed in Apple retail stores. We have eyewitness proof that Apple Stores in two cities (New York City and Barcelona) on two different continents have demo devices featuring Filmr. We even have the pics to prove it!

Not surprisingly, after six months Filmr made Apple's “Best of 2017” list.

Despite these terrific developments, the brothers aren’t resting on their laurels, and neither is Sibers. Right now we’re working on an AR feature for Android for a March 2018 release, and we’re confident about achieving the same success as with the iOS platform.

Free of charge, extremely easy to use, and available in 30+ languages, Filmr is conquering the amateur video editing market. Our clients want to create the world’s best mobile video editor, and Sibers is proud to be a part of their plans.