simple video editing

[fine0023]

This is probably a very basic question. If I'm taking some home movies with my iphone, and I want to do some very basic editing (nothing more than trimming footage or cutting parts out of clips), what would be the best way to do that without changing the original quality very much?
I tried iMovie a little bit, but it looks like when you're all done and you export it, that is going to have a somewhat significant change depending on what options you pick. So next I tried QuickTime Player to edit. I think that might be the best option I've discovered, because you can just save the new video (rather than exporting which you can also do on QuickTime). Anyways, I thought I would just throw it out there to run this by anyone, since I don't know much about these things.
To be clear, I don't really care much whether what I am doing makes the file size larger or smaller (I noticed it did make the .mov's a little bigger after I saved in QuickTime, even if the clip became a few seconds shorter, but that doesn't matter much). All I'm trying to do is make simple cuts/trims and then keep the file as close to the original as possible with hopefully about the same quality. Unless anyone has a better suggestion, I'll probably just go ahead and save them after editing on QuickTime. Thanks.

 

[Dave Braine]

You've tried the two simple options that come with your Mac. Any other suggestions won't be much, if any, different.

Quicktime is fine if you want to just trim bits of each end of the clip, but a little problematic if you want to take something out of the middle.

Not quite sure what you mean by iMovie having a somewhat significant change depending on what options you pick. Just choose the File option and the resolution and quality that suits you.

 

[StoneJack]

This is probably a very basic question. If I'm taking some home movies with my iphone, and I want to do some very basic editing (nothing more than trimming footage or cutting parts out of clips), what would be the best way to do that without changing the original quality very much?
I tried iMovie a little bit, but it looks like when you're all done and you export it, that is going to have a somewhat significant change depending on what options you pick. So next I tried QuickTime Player to edit. I think that might be the best option I've discovered, because you can just save the new video (rather than exporting which you can also do on QuickTime). Anyways, I thought I would just throw it out there to run this by anyone, since I don't know much about these things.
To be clear, I don't really care much whether what I am doing makes the file size larger or smaller (I noticed it did make the .mov's a little bigger after I saved in QuickTime, even if the clip became a few seconds shorter, but that doesn't matter much). All I'm trying to do is make simple cuts/trims and then keep the file as close to the original as possible with hopefully about the same quality. Unless anyone has a better suggestion, I'll probably just go ahead and save them after editing on QuickTime. Thanks.

The thing is that when you shot your movie on iPhone, it has selected an automatic profile for that movie (resolution, fps), most probably 1080p or4 k, 30fps. When you trim the movie in iMovie, and export it back, you just need to select that profile again (or downscale it, or upscale it, or export in some other format). Thats nothing complicated.