Anyone using LumaFusion for editing footage on an iPad?

R

robfilms

Veteran
I am not sheltering in place at my home.

I am four hours away in a borrowed house.

I could not grab my 27” IMac i7 before I left.

I’m living with several dslrs, an assortment of lenses and a simple Rode mic.

I do have an iPad.

I was looking at LumaFusion as a possible way to cut some of the imported dslr footage.

Anyone ever use LumaFusion to cut video on an iPad?

If so, care to share your end to end experience?

Thanks in advance.

Stay well.

Rob
Smalltalk Productions/NYC
 
Stephen & David-

Thanks for the reply.

How long were your LumaFusion projects? 5min? 10min? 30min?

Was your source footage 1080p or 4K?

Was your timeline 1080p or 4K?

Did you post directly to a YouTube or Vimeo like site or did you give the finished project to the client?

What year/spec iPad were you using?

Lastly, can you share your thoughts on the edit process relaying on LumaFusion rather that your regular NLE?

Thanks in advance for any info you care to share.

Stay well.

Rob
Smalltalk Productions/NYC
 
Okay, here’s what I can tell you…

I’ve mostly used LumaFusion for shorter projects (2-5 minutes), or for longer projects that needed little in the way of editing (like an event/speaker video). In my experience, the more raw footage you need to organize within LumaFusion, the more you’ll likely struggle with it. What I mean is that the footage organization tools in something like Final Cut X are light-years ahead of what LumaFusion can do. In FCPx, I would have projects with a LOT of raw footage, all of which I could sort with keywords and folders, so I could instantly find what I needed. LumaFusion (in my opinion) just isn’t there yet. So if your project has a lot of footage that you’ll need to organize, maybe think twice.

As far as the footage itself goes, I’ve only worked with 4K files (okay, maybe the odd 1080p slow-mo clip at times), and I’ve absolutely never had an issue with footage that the iPad OS recognizes. This is one of the limitations of LumaFusion that’s actually more about the OS itself. The traditional way of getting footage into LF is via the Photos app, and that app only recognizes and imports footage in certain formats (IIRC, it’s generally .MOV or .MP4 in 8-bit formats). If it plays in the Photos app, LF will work with it perfectly.

Now, with the last major OS update, we have the Files app. This allows you to get additional formats into LF that you weren’t able to before. I’ve imported 10-bit .MOV files from the GH5/s into LF, and they play smoothly, for the most part. You’ll likely get a yellow warning message that you’re working with a format not supported by the app, but it still seems to work fine. There have been times when the really high bit-rate formats from the GH5 or S1H cause playback/crashing issues in LF, but it seems somewhat inconsistent.

There is no ProRes support in LumaFusion, but again, that’s an iPad OS limitation, not an app limitation. Hopefully Apple will fix this soon. For now, I’d suggest test-driving your workflow through LF to make sure the footage from your camera is recognized, and that you can import smoothly.

I can’t speak to the YouTube/Vimeo export options, as I haven’t used them. To me, it’s ALWAYS best to export locally, then upload to whatever service you want. I’ve also heard of some people having issues with the YT direct upload, but your mileage may vary.

I’m on a 2019 iPad Pro 12.9”, with 512GB of memory. And I’ve been absolutely blown-away at how smoothly I can play back multiple layers of 4K footage on this setup. It’s really shocking when I show people just how well the whole thing works.


As for my personal opinions…

LumaFusion is great, but it’s just a tool, and it’s not the best tool for every edit. I wouldn’t edit a feature length documentary with it, that’s for sure. I think that’s asking too much of an app like this. BUT… You absolutely can edit 30-second broadcast commercials with it, especially with the new XML support that allows you to package/send edit files out for color and finishing. It’s hard to wrap my head around this, and I’m not kidding. For an app at this price point to do what it can is amazing.

So, if you know what the app is capable of, and when it might not be the right choice, I think it will serve you well.
 
I’ll add a few more thoughts here…

Using LumaFusion “works” best when you put some thought into your edit ahead of time. What I mean is, with most other NLEs, you can just toss stuff into the project, do some organizing, and get to work. And you can do that in LF as well. But if you do a bit of pre-planning, the app works much more comfortably. For example, I always do a music search before I even start cutting, and I create a music folder with my selects in it. I also pre-build any logos and lower-thirds I might need, so those are immediately available in LF. And I always make sure any LUT files I use are pre-loaded as well.

What I want as an editor is for any NLE I use to “get out of my way,” so to speak. I don’t want to think about the process, I just want to have the footage and elements I need right there. Doing some of this work in advance helps LumaFusion work for me the way I want it to.

Are there tools missing in LF that I’d like to have? Absolutely. There’s no frame-by-frame audio scrubbing. There’s no smooth speed ramping feature. The color-correction sliders are a bit basic, but workable. Even with limitations like these, LF gives me the most important editing tools I need.
 
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