How to Create a Video Editing App: Must-Have Features and Development Cost

Updated 16 Sep 2023

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It’s hard to deny that video content plays a huge part in our life. According to the newest research by Statista, global mobile video traffic, which was 29,149 petabytes per month in 2020, has reached 60,889 petabytes per month in 2022. Video editing apps play a huge role in creating and popularizing video content.

Mobile Video Traffic

Global video traffic worldwide

In this article, we’ll discuss how to make a video editing app, how much it may cost, and what pitfalls you may face during app development. Let’s get started.

Types and Cost of Video Editing Apps

Video editing app development costs depend on many different factors, such as the number of features, complexity, platforms for which your software is created, etc. Consedering all these factos, the average cost to make a video editing app will range from $30,000 to $300,000+.

The app market is full of various video editing apps helping to solve multiple problems: quick editing, adding simple effects or doing more serious corrections. To fully grasp all the ins and outs of this market, you should learn more about different categories of video apps.

There are five types of video apps:

  • Video recording apps
  • Video editing apps
  • Apps that combine both recording and editing
  • Screen recording apps
  • Apps that include both screen recording and editing

Market analysis is an essential step in video editing app development. Before you determine how your app will look like and what features it’ll have, you should get acquainted with well-established players in this market. That'll help you understand your competitors, see what problems they solve, and what features they offer users. Let’s take a look at the four most popular video editing apps on the market.

Adobe Premiere Rush

Adobe Premiere Rush is a video editing app from Adobe that’s available on iOS, Android, and desktops. It’s designed for people that are not entirely into video editing. This app lets users capture videos using built-in recording functionality. Once the video is captured, users can start editing it immediately.

The app greatly simplifies the video editing process with a drag-and-drop system. Users can easily customize video speed, overlay photos on videos, add music and various effects, and control this content using multiple timelines.

Besides, users can easily take images from Adobe Stock to add them to their videos and save their creations in Adobe Cloud with 100 GB of free space. And the cherry on top is a simple social media integration to let users share their videos to Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms. Adobe distributes its app by a subscription-based model asking users to pay $9.99 monthly to unlock all in-app features.

Adobe Premiere Rush editing interface.

Adobe Premiere Rush editing interface.

Quik

This app was made by the GoPro team. Its primary goal is to promote GoPro’s brand among non-customers and bring more value to customers. Quik brings customers who bought GoPro cameras a set of convenient tools for editing their videos in no time. Quik in a bundle with GoPro cameras creates a powerful ecosystem where users can export videos directly from GoPro cameras to the app. That unique strategy motivates customers to buy GoPro products.

But what about unique features? This app can automatically analyze videos to find the best moments like panoramic views, jumps, smiles, high-speed moments, and so on to highlight them. After that, users can edit videos with 28 adjustable templates and apply them to their videos. Besides, they can add customizable titles, filters, trims, and photos. This free app is available on Android and iOS.

Quik timming option and adjustable templates.

Quik by GoPro

Splice

This iOS app is a real gem among other video editing apps. It’s an all-purpose app where users can add text with various fonts, tweak transitions, arrange video clips, apply different effects, and add music tracks. On top of that, users can sync Splice with their iTunes library and add music to their videos from it. All these features are packed into a simple interface and available for a $9.99 monthly subscription.

Adding music and adjustable timeline in Splice.

Video editing in Splice.

iMovie

This free app is pretty similar to Splice but has its own unique features. iMovie lets users create Hollywood-style trailers using 14 available templates and eight themes to apply to your video. Users can add fancy-looking credit rolls, studio logos, customizable backgrounds, and various special effects to make their videos unique. Furthermore, this app supports 4K resolution and can fix shaky videos.

Since iMovie was made by Apple, it’s available on iOS and macOS. Users can easily transfer their projects among all Apple devices via iCloud or Airdrop.

iMovie editing options.

iMovie editing options.

What to Consider While Developing a Video Editing App

Video editing app development is a long and complicated process that requires taking a lot of decisions. To minimize risks and deliver a truly great product, it’s vital to polish your idea properly.

You need to define your target audience, analyze your competitors, and determine their strengths and weaknesses.

Streamline Your Idea

Your idea must bring unique solutions to users’ problems. Nobody wants another Quik or Splice. At the same time, your app must be relevant to users’ needs to find its market fit. Begin thorough competitor research to discover what they offer users, what features they lack and their weak sides.

Define Your Target Audience

It’s vital to understand who’ll be using your app and for whom you build it. You should define the average users’ interests and problems that they want to solve.

Since we’re talking about video editing app development, your target audience will more likely be into sports, travel, active hobbies, video blogging, and so on. Relying on that, you can assume that your video editing app will come in handy for people who want to capture moments and share thoughts with their loved ones and on social networks.

Divide your target audience using the following criteria:

  • Age
  • Location
  • Interests
  • Income level

This method will help you make your analysis more precise and get a better vision of your target audience. Besides, you can use various question-answer websites like Quora to ask real people about the experience of using video editing apps and discover their opinion about things that can improve their user experience.

Or make it simple. You can contact an experienced software vendor with significant expertise in the media software development services. Their team can provide you with comprehensive research on your target audience and their needs.

Decided to make a question-answer site like Quora? Learn about ways to attract users, monetization models, and much more.

Make a List of Features

You can’t create a video editing app without defining its features. Before applying your idea, you should write out a list of features. All features can be divided into MVP and additional features. Professional technical partner will help you with this process and consult you on features to add for your video editing app.

Minimal Viable Product or MVP is an app with vital features that ensure the execution of basic tasks. For example, the well-known Uber and its first version would not have been able to carry out passenger transportation without the vital MVP features, such as connecting customers with drivers, GPS location tracking, and accepting payments.

MVP is very useful when there’s a need for a quick release. This version gives you such important data as market response and customer feedback. Besides, investors are more likely to invest money into a working product rather than a bare idea or concept.

Additional features it’s all features that are not on the MVP list. Let’s get back to the Uber example. Since the first launch, Uber developers made a lot of complex features after the release of the MVP version: picking a cab class, scheduled rides, split fares, and so on.

Additional features can bring more complex and unique functionality. These features can be implemented in further updates after the MVP release.

To make a video editing app MVP, your must-have features may be:

  • Trimming and adding frames
  • Merging separate files into one (photos and videos)
  • Adding music or sound effects
  • Color correction and transition settings
  • Sharing to social networks (e.g., if you create an app like TikTok, you can read more about its functionality in our article)
  • Save/load video

Once you understood the viability of your idea and product-market fit, it’s time to develop additional features. Here are some advanced features to add:

  • Syncing with various music services
  • Cloud storage
  • Speed up/slow down settings
  • Reverse video option
  • Picture-in-picture option
  • AI editing assistance

Need help with a feature list?

Our experts will help you to determine essential features and make a video editing app

Choose Your Monetization Model

Defining your monetization model is your next step. It’s better to choose a revenue model in the early stages to avoid rebuilding a certain part of the app’s logic. Your software provider’s business analysts can help you to decide on the best one. Yet, you can A/B test different strategies if you’re not sure which one suits better.

There are four monetization models that are frequently used in popular video editing apps:

  • In-app advertising. This method speaks for itself. Your app is free, but users see ads. VivaVideo is an excellent example of a free video editing app with ads.
  • Freemium model. This method is slightly different. The app is free to download, but some features require in-app purchases. For example, inShot removes ads and watermarks from the video for a $2.99 one-time purchase.
  • Subscription model. This monetization model is widespread among video editing apps. You made your app free, but with an option to buy a subscription. Kinemaster adds watermarks to all videos, so users should buy a subscription for $4.99 to remove them.
  • Paymium. It’s a pretty rare monetization model but sometimes may be found among the video editing apps. Apps are paid to download and have in-app purchases at the same time. The most famous app with this monetization model is LumaFusion for iOS.
Famous video editing apps and their monetization models.

Famous video editing apps and their monetization models.

Tech Challenges of Developing a Video Editing App

Video editing app development is not an easy process. Not talking about platform differences. iOS app development varies from Android app development drastically. Developers must solve a lot of tech challenges that you should be aware of as a product owner.

We’ll split this section into Android and iOS tech challenges and discover the most significant of them in detail.

Android Development Pitfalls

The most significant Android development difficulties related to the video render speed and creating features that are missing in pre-made solutions.

Video rendering performance

It’s the main headache in video editing app development for Android. At the moment, there are two special tools for processing videos on Android: FFmpeg and Transcoder. FFmpeg has a huge number of possibilities, but a low processing speed. At the same time, the Transcoder has a very good processing speed, but the functionality is not so great. In addition, it’s a pretty complex tool to work with. If you need to add some features that are absent from Transcoder (watermarks), the development time increases significantly.

Management of Undo/Redo actions

In the development of such functionality, it’s critical to understand which actions can be canceled. The main task is to collect all functions into a single mechanism that will combine all user actions and apply them to the video.

Filters (sepia, negative and so on)

Ready-made solutions are the best choice to implement different filters in the video editing app. But there is a chance of encountering a problem when the necessary filters aren’t in the library or OpenGL is used. The latter is a powerful tool that lets developers do almost anything, but takes a lot of time.

iOS Development Pitfalls

If Android development suffers from missing features and constant work with render performance, iOS development requires precise development of the editing process.

Image and video orientation

It can be difficult to manage the orientation of videos and photos. They can turn over, especially if the development goes simultaneously with an Android version.

Precise video merging with pictures

When merging video with pictures or watermarks, in order to observe the correct aspect ratios, developers have to work with pixels very accurately. Otherwise, when editing a video, pictures or watermarks won’t be superimposed as it should be and it will look odd.

Correct adding of audio tracks

Adding audio to the video can be tricky. Managing scalable audio volume levels is the main headache in iOS video editing app development.

Watermark location

Kinemaster adds watermarks to the videos. Developers must adjust the watermark location on the screen.

Disclosed: Video Editing App Development Cost

“How to make a video editing app?” and “How much does it cost?” are two inseparable questions. Video editing app development can take a while. In fact, the more features you want to implement, the longer the development process will take.

Our Business Analysts have estimated the approximate time and cost of developing a video editing app.

This estimate is approximate and based on the MVP features that were mentioned before.

Approximate estimate of video editing app development

FeatureApproximate time (hours)Approximate cost ($)

Register screen

6

300

Login screen

19

950

My videos screen

50

2500

Adding photos/videos from gallery

3

150

Trimming

40

2000

Adding frames

14

700

Merging separate files into one (for photos)

28

1400

Merging separate files into one (for videos)

22

1100

Adding music and audio effects

28

1400

Color correction

320

16000

Transition settings

106

5300

Social networks sharing

16

800

Save video

2

100

Load video

16

800

Total

670

33500

Tech Stack for iOS and Android

The tech stack of video editing apps for Android and iOS is pretty vast. Here’s the list of technologies that can be used for iOS and Android app development.

Important features and technologies for their proper implementation.

FeatureTechnology

Login

Firebase Dynamic Links

Trimming

FFmpeg (Android, iOS), Transcoder (Android)

Color correction

GPUVideo (Android), MetalAPI (iOS)

Adding music and audio effects

MPMediaPickerController

Social nerwork sharing

Facebook SDK, TikTok SDK, TwitterKit SDK

Video Editing App Development With Cleveroad

If you are looking for a reliable technical partner to create a video editing app, Cleveroad will be a perfect choice for you. Our company, based in the CEE region, has over 10 years of experience in outsourcing software development. With a team of more than 120 in-house engineers Cleveroad completed 170+ successful projects. Our specialists have a huge experience in creating video editing software for mobile devices and computers.

Make a video editing app with Cleveroad to receive such benefits:

  • Experienced team with practical expertise across multiple domains
  • Team flexibility and scalability depending on your needs
  • Fast and efficient video editing app development process
  • Signing Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) at your request
  • Quality control at every development stage and post-release support

Our specialsist developed and released many software solutions for Media and Entertainment industry for this time. One of the most representative is social network for dancers. The platform unites dancers all over the world and has a strong emphasis on working with videos. This app is available on iOS for free.

Ayoo Duet interface.

Ayoo Duet interface.

The in-app feature called Duet lets users put together two videos to make left-right dance comparison to compete with each other. Moreover, users can add music tracks to the videos and trim the music's duration to fit the video length.

Make your own video editing app

Share your idea with our team and we will build a custom video editing app according to your needs

Frequently Asked Questions
How to make video editing app?
  • Step 1. Analyze your future competitors
  • Step 2. Streamline your video editing app idea.
  • Step 3. Define your target audience.
  • Step 4. Make a list of MVP and Additional features.
  • Step 5. Outsource your app idea to professional team
How much does it cost to make a video editing app?

The development of video editing app with MVP features only will cost $33,500. This number consists of development time (670 hours) multiplied on average hourly rate in Estonia ($50/h).

What are the types of video editing apps?

All video apps can be divided on several types:

  • Video recording apps
  • Video editing apps
  • Apps that include both recording and editing
  • Screen recording apps
  • Apps that combine both screen recording and editing
What are the advanced features of the video editing app?

The list of additional features that can be implemented in video editing app is pretty vast. Here a few examples of these features:

  • Sync with various music services
  • AI editing assistance
  • Cloud storage
  • Reverse video option
  • Speed up/Slow down option
How hard it is to create a video editing app?

Video editing app development has its own pitfalls related to the platform you choose to develop for. For example, if you choose to develop an app for Android be advised that not every pre-made solution used in the development will have features that you need. In that case, you need to develop them from scratch. Moreover, managing the right rendering speed on Android devices is a must.

If your chosen platform is iOS, your main headache will be constant work with editing process (right positioning of images/videos, correct adding of audio tracks, and so on)

How can I monetize video editing app?

You can choose between several monetization strategies:

  • In-app ads
  • Freemium model (app is free with in-app purchases)
  • Subscription model (app is free with option to buy a subscription)
  • Paymium (app is paid with in-app purchases)
Author avatar...
About author

Evgeniy Altynpara is a CTO and member of the Forbes Councils’ community of tech professionals. He is an expert in software development and technological entrepreneurship and has 10+years of experience in digital transformation consulting in Healthcare, FinTech, Supply Chain and Logistics

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Comments

4 comments
CS
Cecilie Sørensen
27.11.2020 at 06:16

Never thought that video editing app development takes so much time — especially a color correction and transition settings development. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

TA
Tormod Aasheim
29.10.2020 at 14:16

This article is very helpful. Keep it up!

EK
Elif Koyuncu
01.09.2020 at 19:58

Thanks for the precise time and cost estimate. Now things became clearer to me.

avatar
Anton Diduh
01.10.2020 at 11:38

You're welcome, Elif. I'm always happy to help!

KA
Kuzey Akar
24.08.2020 at 03:21

I run into the problem of choosing the right monetization model for my video editing app. It's surprising that subscription model is so popular among the other apps. I guess I'll stick to this model.

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