How to make a year in review video on iPhone: the recap, the chronicle, and the one for Instagram
By December a phone holds a year: a few hundred clips, most never watched twice. A year in review video is the one piece of editing almost everyone wants to have done and almost nobody does, because picking two minutes out of six hours is the job. There are three shapes it can take, and each one has a reason to exist.
1. The recap: two minutes, to music
The classic. Thirty to ninety moments, one song, cut on the beat, titled with the year. It is what Instagram and Google Photos generate automatically, and the reason theirs feel generic is that the selection is by date, not by what the clips contain.
Doing it by hand: pick one clip per month first, so the year is covered, then add the ten moments that matter regardless of month. Order by date, not by quality. Put the song’s lift on the best one. Export at the shape of the majority of the footage.
In Life2Film, set the period to the year and choose the summary row, which carries the year as its title. The default length is a minute, with 30, 60 and 120 second options; the app scores every clip for sharpness, faces and motion and spreads the picks across the year rather than clustering on the one trip you filmed too much of. Pick a track; the cuts land on its beats.
2. The chronicle: everything, in order, no music
The one people do not think to make and then keep forever. Every clip of the year, in the order it was shot, trimmed to its best seconds, up to ten minutes. No music, just the sound that was there. It is not for posting. It is for the family, and for yourself in ten years.
Life2Film’s Chronicle preset is this film. For a year it leads the list, because ten minutes of everything is what a year is actually for. It keeps capture order, ignores the beat grid, and can carry the dates on screen so you know which week you are watching.
3. The one for Instagram: fifteen seconds, vertical
The recap’s younger sibling. Fifteen to thirty seconds, 9:16, hard on the beat, one caption. The rule is one moment per second, so fifteen moments. Anything slower reads as a slideshow.
Choose Reels in Life2Film and it forces the vertical shape regardless of the footage, starts at fifteen seconds, and cuts on the beat of the track you pick. Post it natively; Instagram’s library music is the safe choice for the audio, so you may want to render without music and add it there.
New Year, specifically
A New Year recap is a year in review with a deadline. Life2Film’s New Year preset is grey for eleven months and unlocks in December: a family cut, a “New Year” title, and the same lengths as the birthday film. Make the year chronicle in the quiet days before, the recap on the 30th, and the Reel while the party is on. All three come from the same footage.
Songs for a year recap
Pick something with a clear lift at about two thirds of its length, and put the year’s best moment there. Avoid songs with a long intro; the first cut should land within two seconds. If you are posting to Instagram or TikTok, use their library at posting time, or the audio may be removed. Our free BPM detector shows where the beats are in any track, for the by-hand version.
Where the footage goes
Every automatic year recap you have seen so far was made on someone’s server from a library you uploaded. Life2Film’s analysis runs on the iPhone, so the year’s footage stays on the phone, there is no account, and it works on a plane. How that compares.