Editing on the Road — Myriad Misadventures

When I started making videos I used iMovie. I was just making short stuff for YouTube and later TikTok and iMovie is free Mac software so I already had it. It did the job. A little while later, after getting a little more serious, I upgraded to Apple’s fancier and more expensive (although I guess everything is expensive compared to free) FinalCut Pro (FCP). I absolutely love FCP and think it’s great software, although honestly I probably don’t use nearly enough of it’s features.

When I travel though I don’t always bring my laptop. It’s trip by trip whether I bring it. But I do usually bring my iPad. Good for reading on the plane/train and I can substitute it for my laptop in lots of cases. One problem though is that iMovie on the iPad is...not so great. Or maybe it’s okay but the couple of times I tried it I hated it. So I needed an alternative. I’d read that LumaFusion was the best of the best on iOS but felt the iPad just wasn’t quite up to video editing. My attempts to move stuff around via the lightning port had been subpar at best and I was lacking in space. But after upgrading my hardware, and getting that usb C port, I decided it was time to pull the trigger.

By iPad standards LumaFusion is pretty expensive. At $30 it’s at least three times more expensive than anything else I’ve ever bought although it’s still only costs a tenth of FCP. I bought it without a project to use it for in mind but figured I might use it while traveling. I probably should have waited until I needed it but I like buying things... And by buying it earlier I could play around with it to get used to it for when I needed it.

And when i needed it was during this summer’s first trip to Beihai and Weizhou Island. I had managed to finish all of my TikTok and Douyin videos but hadn’t finished my YouTube video yet. I was bringing my laptop on the trip so it was finally time for LumaFusion to shine.

And it started out great. That 5.5 hour train ride gave me plenty of time to get some work done and I got the first couple minutes of the video edited. I’d played around with the app a little but it still took a little getting used to. That being said it was a great alternative to bringing my computer on the trip. Buuuuut that’s about as far as I got. Not because of LumaFusion though. I just couldn’t get myself motivated to do any more work during the trip haha. So after a promising start I ended up not getting any more video edited and missed that week’s YouTube post. The best laid plans of mice and men right?

But since I had already started making the video I didn’t want to start over on FCP. So for a couple of days I was editing on LumaFusion on my iPad even though I was home and could have done it on my laptop. And it was pretty convenient. I can lounge around pretty much anywhere editing with the iPad and I got quite a few looks while I was editing on the subway.

As enjoyable as LumaFusion is I don’t see it replacing FCP anytime soon. The laptop is just easier for getting serious work done than the iPad. But LumaFusion has definitely shown it was worth buying and, as long as I can force myself to set aside some time to work while I’m traveling, should definitely help me keep pushing out videos even when I’m not at home.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you on my next trip. Don't forget to click the links below and follow to stay up to date on what I'm doing and where I am and to see all the pictures and videos from my trips.