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DJI Lightcut - any good?

scro

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Nov 8, 2019
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Does anyone use DJI's Lightcut app for video editing? Is it any good? Is it any better than the built-in editor to the DJI Fly app?
 
I may well be wrong, but it seems to be only available on mobile devices using either iOS or Android. My old eyes need a lot more screen space than that.
 
I use Lightcut on my iPhone after a shoot to make a summary video or 2 very quickly. It's pretty good, but takes some practice. There aren't very good instructions anywhere (that I could find), but I eventually figured out whatever I needed to do.
 
Went ahead and installed it on my android phone. It looks to be extremely similar to the built in editor in Fly. Same style interface and nearly identical features, one is probably an adaption of the other. I've only had a 5min play with it but it looks to have slightly better controls over some of the tools, and the ability to export in 4k (dji built in app only does 1080p).
 
I tried installing it on BlueStacks on my windows 11 system and it simply does not work. First it would not install thru playstore. Then i was able to find a way to download the apk outside of playstore and was able to install it on bluestacks...everything seemed to work but when i went to play any video within LightCut it was a gray/black screen. I had audio but no video. I tried all kinds of things to get it to work. Finally i just uninstalled and deleted it all.
 
It isn't compatible with many android devices. Older devices have 4k export options but many new android phones with better hardware don't.
 
I installed in on my MacBook Pro (Sonoma, M1 processor). I haven't tried editing any video footage but did throw some still photos on it. Seemed to work fine. It does give smartphone prompts even though it's installed on my laptop. For example: Sometimes a prompt showing two squeezing fingers will appear, telling me I can crop the image/video if I use fingers on the smartphone screen. I just click it off whenever it appears.

For quick, easy editing I often use iMovie. But Lightcut seems a bit more powerful and more user friendly. I like how the speed of a clip can easily be changed.
 
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