“How can I edit my iPhone videos on a PC? My video editing software won’t open the iPhone movies”

To edit iPhone video on a Windows computer, you are going to need some additional software. If your computer came with Windows Movie Maker, it won’t support editing the MOV files created by your iPhone. If your computer doesn’t have Windows Movie Maker, you definitely need some video editing software to get the job done.

The video editing software you want to edit iPhone video on your PC is Pinnacle Studio. I use Pinnacle Studio to edit iPhone movies at least once every week. The software is fairly intuitive to use and makes it easy to quickly import iPhone video files for editing. The basic version, called Studio HD, will work just fine for editing iPhone videos. If you want additional special effects and features, you can always upgrade to one of the other versions. Pinnacle Studio isn’t free, but it works great for editing iPhone movies.

Before you get started editing your iPhone video, be sure to Download and Install Pinnacle Studio.

Once you have the Pinnacle software installed, you are ready to start editing your iPhone video. If you haven’t already copied a video file from your iPhone to your PC, make sure you connect your iPhone to your computer, then use Windows Explorer to browse to the iPhone > Mass Storage > DCIM folder. I find this method is more reliable than using the Import tab on Pinnacle Studio, because I have seen the Import function fail to recognize iPhone videos.

Copy any of the .MOV files in that directory to your computer in order to add them to Pinnacle Studio. I typically copy the .MOV files to my Videos folder, which is easy to remember.
To add your iPhone video to Pinnacle Studio, click the Select Video Files button (which looks like a folder).

Click the My Videos folder in your User folder, then choose MOV Video Files (*.mov) as the file type to make your iPhone videos easy to find.

After Pinnacle imports your iPhone videos, they are ready to edit. On the Edit tab in Pinnacle, drag the clip you want to edit to the video timeline. Crop your clip, add effects, add motion titles, modify the audio, or anything else you want to do to your iPhone video, then click the Make Movie button, choose the export settings and make your movie.