For most adrenalin-driven GoPro shooters, it’s all about the thrill of capturing the action, whether it’s a wingsuit flight over mountainous terrain, surfing stunts through giant waves, or your clever dog’s first-ever skateboarding session.
Truth be told, with the adrenalin still coursing through your veins and your mind buzzing about your next big project, the last place you want to be is cooped up in a small room sifting through tons of footage, fretting over the next edit.
With this in mind, GoPro has just splashed the cash on two video editing startups to help it provide a more complete package that it hopes will please current customers and pull in a few new ones.
The California-based company picked up Replay and Splice for a reported $105 million to “accelerate GoPro’s ability to deliver ultra-convenient, yet powerful, mobile editing solutions” to users of its Hero action cameras.
Replay is the work of French firm Stupeflix and lets users quickly choose video clips and photos before automatically combining them into a single video complete with transition effects, graphics, and synchronized music.
Splice, on the other hand, requires more input from the user, though its Texas-based creator, Vemory, describes the software as offering “advanced features normally found on desktop editing apps, but with the speed and efficiency of a mobile app interface.”
GoPro founder and CEO Nick Woodman said the three companies will work together to deliver a faster and hopefully more enjoyable mobile editing experience, adding that the increasing power of mobile solutions marked it out as “the predominant editing platform of the future.”
Both apps are still available on iOS, though this could presumably change in light of GoPro’s move.
Up to now, most GoPro users serious about editing their footage usually turn to more powerful third-party offerings instead of GoPro’s provided software, which offers few features. By incorporating the new apps into its product, GoPro wants to create a more rounded shoot-and-edit experience to help users produce dazzling sequences with minimum effort.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised by the camera makers’s latest move. During last month’s earnings call, which followed the release of troubling financial data for the company, Woodman described editing as an “inconvenience” for GoPro users, a comment that suggested he was already in the middle of sorting out a solution.
