How to Edit an iPhone Video to Create an Eye-Catching Tweet

I recently taught a workshop on science videography at a science society conference and wanted to post a few Tweets to let society members know about it and to attract additional participants. My plan was to post daily Tweets during the week prior to the workshop. My problem was how to make my Tweets noticeable among the many other Tweets being posted by conference goers. So, instead of attaching photos to the Tweets, I decided to create a series of brief video bulletins to make my Tweets more eye-catching and to emphasize the topic of the workshop.

However, I did not want to spend a lot of time on this, as I had my hands full preparing for the workshop. After a bit of experimentation, I discovered that it was easy to take short (10 second) video clips and use the editing option in the iPhone camera app to add a bit of text describing the workshop. Then it was an easy task to compose a Tweet on my phone and attach the video bulletin, a different one each day. A bunch of people viewed the Tweets, and I attracted several additional participants for my workshop. See below for an example:

Someone who saw my Tweets asked me how I created them. So, this week I put together a tutorial to show how to quickly turn a video clip stored in an iPhone camera roll into an eye-catching bulletin to announce an upcoming event or publication. The resultant video announcement can be exported and posted on a website, on a Facebook page, on a LinkedIn profile, or in a Tweet.

4 thoughts on “How to Edit an iPhone Video to Create an Eye-Catching Tweet

  1. I love this tutorial, but I have an android Samsung and I don’t see these video editing features on my phone. I usually download a video and edit it in Microsoft Movie Maker.

    • Hi Joy, Thanks for the comment and information about your phone. If any readers have an android phone and only need to trim their video clips, it can be done without using an editing app such as Movie Maker. Basically, to access the edit option, you need to open the video on your phone and then select the “three-dot” icon displayed on the playback screen; there should be a drop-down menu. On a Samsung phone, tap Edit > Studio > Video Trimmer. The trimmer works much like the one described in my tutorial for the iPhone. Thus, you can trim your video to remove the shaky bits, but, unfortunately, you can’t do any other editing such as adding text.

  2. Hi Joy, Is there a reason why my IPhone6 have no “three-dot” option?
    I’m trying to edit a video but unfortunately it has only Cancel play and done option.
    Thanks!
    Anna

    • The “three-dot” option is available only for videos filmed through the iPhone camera and stored in your library. If you want to edit a video for Twitter, shoot it and save it to file first. After editing, create your Tweet and then attach the edited video.

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