Clipper - Instant Video Editor for iOS

Clipper promises to help users create and share attractive videos, offering an array of musical choices and effects for customizing your cinematic masterpiece. There's a lot to like about Clipper, but it falls short in one very important way: it doesn't always save your finished videos.

Pros

Attractive, intuitive interface: Clipper launches with a tutorial that walks you through the process of creating a video; but even without this, the app would be pretty easy to figure out. The interface is sleek and easy to navigate, allowing you to create and preview great-looking videos in a matter of minutes.

Plenty of features: Clipper lets you combine multiple videos, editing their length within the app if necessary. There are five Instagram-style effects to choose from, with two more sets of six effects available for purchase. Clipper also offers six different music options -- pop, dubstep, dramatic, folk, piano, and electropop -- or you can upgrade the app for $2.99 and gain the ability to use the music of your choice. Upgrading also removes the Clipper watermark that appears in each finished video.

Cons

Limited length: Clipper is in the business of making mini-movies, not feature-length presentations, so each clip seems to be limited to seven or eight seconds in length. There was no mention of this restriction anywhere within the app, so we had to figure it out on our own. This could be a significant drawback depending on the subject of your video.

Inconsistent saving: We were all set to save our first video and pressed the button to save it to our Camera Roll. A progress bar appeared indicating that the video was in the process of being saved, but it never progressed, and the app appeared frozen. We restarted the app and were able to successfully create, save, and share several other videos, but inconsistent performance in this area is obviously a concern. No one wants to put time into creating a video only to find that all of their work has been lost.

Bottom line

Clipper is a fun and easy-to-use app that creates really nice-looking videos. We were impressed with how artistic the results were, even with minimal effort on our part. But the fact that Clipper sometimes has trouble saving videos can be really frustrating. Try Clipper, but go into it knowing that you might experience some disappointment if your video is lost.

A few changes under the hood