Three editing apps to quickly turn travel videos into shareable show reels – we put them to the test

Are you now taking as many videos as photos on your travels? Are you also struggling to find time to do anything with the footage stored on your phone? If this sounds like you, don’t worry. You can now quickly produce professional-looking, shareable compilations without the stress.

Until recently, the most basic option was to upload your raw footage to Instagram, where it would be cropped into a square and published on your account. At the other end of the scale, you could also use software like Adobe Premiere Elements 11, Windows Movie Maker or iMovie, but they can be time-consuming, often desktop-based, and require editing knowledge.

The three best gadgets to improve your Instagram travel videos

Cue a new generation of video-editing apps that use AI to produce a polished compilation in seconds that is perfect for uploading to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, WeChat and Weibo. We put three apps – each available on iOS and Android – to the test during a recent trip to Iceland, and here are our findings.

1. GoPro Quik

Quik is designed to take the pain out of editing hours of GoPro footage – but it also works with video shot on a smartphone. You just select the videos and photos on your phone, and the app splices them together into a short video, using AI to extract only the interesting sections.

For the most part, it works really well, though sometimes it misses the best moments, so you do have to manually edit it. Still, with automatic titling based on the GPS location of where you shot the footage, the polished transitions and evena musical background, Quik is a significant time saver. It also makes it really easy to add text, and upload to all the major social media platforms right from within the app. You can also download it as a square-cropped MOV file.

2. Magisto