Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you needed to be able to download and edit a Facebook Live when you are on your smartphone?
If you host a Facebook Live on mobile you get the opportunity to save the video replay to your camera roll. If you live stream to Facebook on desktop you will be able to access the replay from your Page or Profile.
However it may be that you host a Facebook Live and then delete the recording from your camera roll after you have transferred it to wherever you store your past events.
That is what happened to my co-host for the Live Stream Insiders. He found he was on his iPhone and needed to download an edit one of his past live streams to share a clip with a colleague. He discovered that with the help of a free iOS app and another online tool he could download and save his Facebook Live and then edit it as required with other apps on his phone.
He shared the steps on Twitter and you can find them in this curation here that we shared on the show.
I thought I would walk through the process myself to document it should I need to follow this approach in the future.
Please note that you need to be aware of copyright – I am not advocating that you download and edit content you do not have the rights to. Also you need to ensure that you have a good mobile phone data connection and sufficient space on your camera roll to be able to follow the process below.
The first step you need to take is to download the MyMedia File Manager app from the iOS app store.
Next add in the browser section of the MyMedia app the url SaveFrom.net – this will allow you to download the video from Facebook and then it will be saved into the MyMedia app, from where you can transfer it to other apps on your iPhone for editing. In the screen shot below you can see how I searched and found the SaveFrom.net site in the browser.
Now you need to get the url of your Facebook Live replay. Open the Facebook App and search for the video – then click the share button.
I chose to download a video that my co-host had created to then create a short animation from a fun and unusual live stream he had recorded.
Then you need to add the url to the SaveFrom.net site which will still be open in the MyMedia app.
You will then be asked to name your file for your video download.
You will have the option to download the video to your camera roll in SD or HD.
You will then find the downloaded live video file the the media folder of the MyMedia app.
To be able to edit the video, you need to download it to your camera roll (which is what I did) or open it in another app. This will allow you to edit the video, for example, in my situation I trimmed the video, added a text overlay and then converted the video into a short gif that you can see here on Twitter.
If this is the first time you have downloaded a file from MyMedia to your camera roll it will request access.
Now you can edit your downloaded Facebook Live replay in other apps on your iPhone. Make sure that you delete the file from MyMedia if you want to ensure you do not have multiple copies of the video on your phone.
I have tried this approach with Twitter but have not been able to download a video from my own Twitter feed – if you figure out how to do so with MyMedia and SaveFrom.net, do let me know how you do so.
This may be a little cumbersome in terms of downloading, but I hope you will remember this approach, if you like my co-host, you are in s situation where you need to edit a video and can only access it via your iPhone.
If you have questions about creating and editing images, video and live video on your mobile device you can schedule a conversation with me here.
