Review: VEE FOR VIDEO is a Very Good App for Creating Great Everyday Video

Vee for Video ($1.99 at launch plus in-app purchases) is the new all-in-one iPhone video app from the team who created all-in-one iPhone photo app Camera+. As such, expectations for Vee are high. Camera+ was a game changer when introduced and it’s matured excellently since. The “matured excellently” part is important.

Vee For Video is an all-in-one video app. You can shoot video, edit clips and scenes, apply filters and effects and even a soundtrack all from within the app. It’s fast, responsive, stable, and easy to use. Creating great-looking everyday videos is a snap.

I can see where comparisons will be drawn between Vee and the excellent FiLMic Pro or iMovie for iPhone. It’s an apples to pears comparison. FiLMiC Pro is targeted toward pro and more advanced videographers and is loaded with the tools and features they need. iMovie is an editor. By design, there are things it can do that Vee can’t and vice-versa.

Using Vee For Video

I spent some time using Vee For Video. You can see my Ingmar Bergman-esque results in my test video.

Vee makes shooting and editing everyday video about as easy as apping a photo. The interface is uncluttered and although you could start shooting with it out of the box, I recommend taking a few minutes to go through the short tutorial when the app first runs. It’ll help you down the road when you get to editing your clips.

For an all-in-one, Vee’s toolset is impressive although not complete. Most of the tools are out of the way until needed for distraction-free shooting. The camera features both the standard focus/exposure target which easily splits into seeparate focus and exposure targets with a two-finger tap. The viewfinder features a rule of thirds grid that can be toggled off and on. The grid is ghosted back which makes it present but not as distracting. It’s a detail that I like.

The Stabilizer tool is worth the price alone. Vee uses your device’s sensors to eliminate camera wobble and shaky video. I was skeptical, but the results are impressive. Vee’s stabilizer eliminates most of the small shakes that can get captured in hand-held video. In my test video, it softened many of the larger wobbles picked up by the camera when I was walking. It didn’t reduce all of the shakes, but it definitely minimized most of them noticeably and without visible artifacts in the video. When shooting video on an iPHone 5S or older, there is about a one-second delay between your subject and the viewfinder when using the stabilizer. It’s like shooting with an echo. Most of the time, I wasn’t bothered by the delay and the results on video are definitely worth it. Got an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus? The Stabilizer Pro mode virtually eliminates this delay. It’s turned off by default. I highly recommend that’s one of the first settings you check and switch.

Vee has a 3x digital zoom that when combined with the apps stabilizer mode, can create clear, fairly sharp video. Any type of zoom or telephoto really magnifies the shakes of handheld video and the combination of the zoom and stabilizer tool here really makes the video zoom a useful tool. Zoomed video created by Vee is less likely to give your viewers a headache.

A really handy tool that is not found in enough video apps is Vee’s Ghost mode. No, this does not instantly turn your videos into dark, shaky-cam horror movies. It leaves a ghosted image in your viewfinder of the last frame previously shot, allowing you to easily align or compose your next shot. Ghost mode is essential when you are making Robot Chicken-style stop motion animation. Unfortunately, Vee doesn’t also have a single frame mode making stop motion difficult to create.

Filters can be applied here and applied live as you shoot. They can also be changed applied in the editing window, so having them here is moe of a talking point than a usable tool. I prefer to shoot clean raw video and add effects in post.

Vee has several speed and resolution mode that you can shoot with. On my iPhone 5S, there were three – standard 1080p at 30 frames per second, 60 FPS and slightly smaller 720p HD, and 120 FPS also at 720p. There are additional speeds when used on an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.

 

This review continues on Page 2

Next: Shooting and Editing with Vee

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App Store link: Vee for Video – Medious