Five ways, and who each one suits
Nearly every travel video tool is one of five kinds of thing. Knowing which kind you are looking at explains most of what it is for, and which one suits the photographs you have.
| Kind of tool | Best at | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Your phone’s own highlights | Free, instant, no setup | One phone’s library, chosen for you |
| Action-camera apps | Cutting fast footage to a beat | That camera’s own clips, cut to music |
| Trip-tracking apps | A live journal and a route map | The trip as you logged it along the way |
| Collaborative albums | Getting everyone’s photos in one place | One shared album of everybody’s pictures |
| A hired editor | Judgement, and the best possible result | Your material, their craft, to their schedule |
| Videmory | Collecting from everyone and finishing the film | The gathering and the finished film, watched before you pay |
Descriptions are of categories of product, not of particular companies; individual apps and services differ and their terms are theirs to state.
If your photographs are all on one phone
Use what is already there. A phone-made highlight reel costs nothing and takes no effort, and for a short trip photographed by one person it is a reasonable answer. The moment a second person's camera roll matters, it stops being one.
If you travelled with other people
This is the case that breaks most tools, because they are built around a single library. The work is not editing, it is collecting: full-size originals with their capture dates intact, from people who will not install anything to provide them. Choose on how a tool solves that, because the editing is the easy half.
If you did not keep a journal
Some lovely travel apps build their film from a trip you logged as you went, and if you kept it up the result has something no other method has: your own words, written at the time. Videmory works the other way round, reconstructing the trip afterwards from the dates already inside your photographs, so there is nothing to have kept up with.
If you want a person's judgement in it
Hire an editor, and go in knowing what it asks: you gather everything, you wait, and you pay before you see it. For the right trip that is a fair trade.
If you want the whole job done and want to see it first
That is the gap Videmory is built for. One link collects everyone's originals, the trip is assembled in the order it happened, and you watch the complete film before deciding whether to buy it. Nothing is charged for making it or for watching it.
What Videmory does with it
One person starts the trip and shares a private link. Everybody who was there adds their own photos and video from their own phone — no account, nothing to install. Videmory reads the date and time your camera wrote into each file, puts the whole trip in the order it happened, trims the clips, and edits it to a soundtrack you choose. You watch the finished film before you decide to buy it.
Introductory launch offer: AU$49 for your first finished film and AU$15 for each additional version — another length, another aspect ratio, or both. No subscription, and nothing to pay in advance. Introductory pricing is available for a limited time and may increase in the future. See how it works · Pricing
Your questions, answered
What is the best travel video maker?
It depends entirely on where your photographs are. If they are all on your phone, your phone's own highlight reel is free and instant and hard to beat for effort. If they are spread across the people you travelled with, a tool working from a single library can only tell your part of it, and the question becomes which service collects as well as it edits.
Will it feel like our trip, or like everybody else's?
Two things make a film feel like yours rather than like a format. One is that it runs in the order the trip actually happened rather than an order chosen for effect. The other is that it draws on everyone's photographs, so the people who were holding the cameras are in it too. Both are structural rather than stylistic, which is why they hold up whichever soundtrack you choose.
Do I have to keep a travel journal or track my route to get a film?
Not with Videmory. Some travel apps build their film from a trip you logged as you went, which is a lovely thing to have if you kept it up. Here the trip is reconstructed afterwards from the dates already inside your photographs, so nothing had to be done during the holiday.
Can I switch after I have already used something else?
Yes. Whatever tool your photographs are sitting in, what you need out of it is the original files. Export them at full size rather than sharing them, and they carry their dates with them.