Movie Studio is the timeline video editing app that comes with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Android 4.0

Future hardware with Android 4.0 will probably include Movie Studio, but as hardware manufacturers and carriers skin phones anything is possible. The Nexus is where Google starts with the Android operating system.

Your timeline can be video files, still clips, added audio files and captions.

Edits are saved as you work with rendering taking place on the fly.

Links to past projects appear when you open Movie Studio.

You can import the next clip via the menu or touch the “+” next to an end clip. An import menu will appear and the next clip will be imported.

Clips can be moved around the timeline by touching holding and then dragging.

A blue highlight will appear and the clip can be dropped anywhere along the timeline.

Sometimes you will notice a small green rendering warning bar in the timeline while the phone catches up rendering your edits. Try working with clips that are not the highest 1080 p HD if things get boggy. Hardware is only going to get more powerful.

A clip can be trimmed by touching the triangle next to a highlighted clip. A diamond shape appears and you can trim and re-expand the clip by dragging.

The entire timeline can be expanded and condensed to make it easier to work on using a two finger gesture (pinch and expanding your thumb and forefinger works well).

You can add an extra sound track to the main sound track and adjust it’s volume.

You can apply “ducking” to the second sound track which will fade it in and out depending on the output of the primary track.

Effects: Transition one clip into another, apply a gradient, Sepia and Negative.

Transitions come in alpha, crossfade, fade to and from black, sliding right out left in, left out right in, top out bottom in and bottom out top in.

You can determine the fade time of a transition from .2 – 3 seconds.

Pan Zoom allows you to add motion and/or zooming to a still clip. A new window opens up. You select a start point in the still. You pinch to zoom and/or drag to your end point. Save the end point.  An infinite number of ways to add motion and focus on something in a still image.

Captions have a choice of center and bottom title with two rows of text on a gray or orange mask.

Your movie can be exported from 848 x 480 to 1920 x 1080. You can size down if the video was shot in a higher resolution. You can choose a compression ratio for the save making the file smaller and lower quality.

All movies are saved to their own folder in the gallery with a thumbnail. You can access the project file to edit anything in it again by reopening the app.

Keep in mind that the video camera in Android 4.0 used on the Galaxy Nexus can grab high resolution stills on the fly while shooting video. Touch the screen (gently) and you will see a momentary red highlight and the still image appearing in the preview window.

For a multi-platform journalist producing a raw video, all that is usually needed from a smartphone video editor is a trimmed clip. Movie Studio adds captions, transitions, extra sound tracks and the ability to give motion to stills you shoot with your phone.

A free, robust video editor that has great promise as it appears on more tablets and phones shipped or updating to Android 4.0. Add some Verizon 4G LTE with fast upload speeds of 8-9 MB/sec and the package is complete for getting a raw, edited video online.