Open-Source iOS Video Editing Resources | Generated by AI

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Question: You’re looking for an iOS video editor (preferably open source) that has an editing workflow similar to InShot: extract audio from a video, add/remove audio tracks, insert videos, and a timeline where the “Add” button is on the left. You also want open-source editing software you can study.

Answer:

The UI you’re describing is the standard mobile NLE (non-linear editor) workflow:

Timeline

+ Add Video   + Audio
----------------------------
Video Track
Audio Track
Text Track
Sticker Track

InShot, CapCut, and VN Video Editor all follow roughly this design.

Open-source iOS video editors

Unfortunately, there are very few mature open-source iOS video editors on the App Store. Most commercial apps (InShot, CapCut, VN, LumaFusion) are closed source.

The best open-source projects to study are:

Project	iOS	Timeline	Audio editing	Notes
Kdenlive	No	✅	✅	Excellent architecture (Qt/C++)
OpenShot Studios	No	✅	✅	Python/C++, easy to understand
Olive Team	No	✅	✅	Modern timeline implementation
Shotcut	No	✅	✅	Uses MLT framework

These aren’t iOS apps, but they contain solid timeline and editing logic that can be ported.

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Open-source iOS frameworks

If you’re building your own editor, these are more useful than finding a full app.

1. GPUImage 2

Created by Brad Larson.

Features:

• filters
• camera
• video processing
• Metal/OpenGL

Great for effects.

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2. NextLevel

A Swift framework for:

• recording
• trimming
• exporting
• AVFoundation wrapper

Very clean codebase.

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3. VideoLab

Swift timeline editing.

Supports:

• multiple clips
• overlays
• audio
• transitions
• export

Probably one of the closest open-source libraries to an editor.

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4. PryntTrimmerView

Very popular trimming UI.

Provides the familiar:

|------video------|
^                 ^
left handle   right handle

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5. BBMetalImage

Modern Metal replacement for GPUImage.

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Commercial apps worth studying

These have excellent UX even though they’re closed source.

• InShot

  • Extract Audio
  • Voiceover
  • Music
  • Stickers
  • Very simple timeline

• CapCut

  • multi-track
  • keyframes
  • audio extraction
  • AI features

• VN Video Editor

  • closest to desktop editors
  • free
  • multi-track

• LumaTouch’s LumaFusion

  • arguably the best professional iOS editor
  • excellent timeline architecture

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If you’re implementing it yourself

Apple already provides nearly everything through AVFoundation.

Typical architecture:

Project
├── VideoTrack
│     clip1
│     clip2
│
├── AudioTrack
│     extracted audio
│     music.mp3
│
├── TextTrack
│
└── StickerTrack

Operations become:

Insert Clip

Extract Audio

Delete Audio

Move Clip

Split Clip

Trim Clip

Export

Export is typically done with:

AVMutableComposition

AVMutableVideoComposition

AVAssetExportSession

This is also how many commercial editors are built internally.

If your goal is to build an InShot-like editor

I’d recommend studying, in this order:

1. VideoLab (Swift timeline composition)
2. NextLevel (recording and capture)
3. PryntTrimmerView (trim UI)
4. Apple’s AVFoundation sample code
5. Kdenlive/OpenShot for larger-scale timeline architecture

This combination gets you much closer to a production-quality iOS editor than searching for a fully open-source InShot clone, because there currently isn’t a mature open-source iOS app that matches InShot’s feature set.

References:

• https://github.com/ruanjx/VideoLab
• https://github.com/NextLevel/NextLevel
• https://github.com/HHK1/PryntTrimmerView
• https://github.com/BradLarson/GPUImage2
• https://github.com/MetalPetal/BBMetalImage
• https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation

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