【Watch Believer Online】

GoPro is Watch Believer Onlinemerging its GoPro app and Quik app into one, helping users finally declutter their phone screens. It’s about time.

Now called GoPro Quik or simply Quik, the new app places the functionality of both the GoPro and Quik apps in one convenient location. Users now only need a single app to control their GoPro camera, manage its content, and reframe 360 videos, as well as put together both manual and automatic edits of their clips.

This means you can simply select which photos and videos you think are best, and Quik will edit them into a music-synced short clip ready for Instagram. Of course, you can also tweak and change whatever the app cooks up if you aren't fully satisfied.

“Our approach to creating auto edits is less restrictive — you kind of throw at it what you want to have a video from and it returns to you what it thinks is best,” GoPro senior product marketing manager Mike Maxson told Mashable at a press briefing.

Though the new app will be regularly updated with new features, at launch it will have 13 automated edit theme templates, 47 filters, and 190 music tracks on a rotating roster. Some of these are new to this update, though most are brought over from the previous Quik app. Of the selection, two video themes, 25 filters, and 18 music tracks will also only be available to people who pay for a Quik subscription.

Notably, Quik's 18 premium music tracks are all brand new royalty-free Go-Pro originals. While GoPro has cleared the rights to the other 172 tracks, meaning users shouldn’t have problems uploading their edited videos to social media, Maxson cautioned that GoPro can only guarantee no issues with their 18 original tracks.

“You can’t be absolutely sure unless you own it yourself outright,” said Maxson.

The new Quik app also brings over the GoPro app’s Mural function, which was first introduced in December. Users can save their best clips to the Mural wall and organise them into groups called "events," meaning you don’t have to go digging when you want to find a particular clip. Multiple uploads from a single event are automatically edited together into a highlight reel.

While this merge simplifies some matters, it does slightly complicate others — namely, GoPro’s subscription services.

Previously, GoPro only offered a $49.99 annual GoPro subscription, which provided unlimited cloud storage, discounts on GoPro accessories, camera replacements, and the ability to livestream. Now GoPro also offers a separate Quik subscription, priced at $1.99 per month or $9.99 per year. Fortunately GoPro subscribers will have access to all the functions included in the Quik subscription, so they only have to manage the one.

Subscribing to Quik unlocks the ability to save videos you've edited using premium features, including specific themes, filters, music, and GoPro's new multi-speed editing tool. This tool allows users to slow, speed up, or even freeze different parts of a single clip, rather than applying the effect to the whole video.

Significantly, subscribing also removes Quik’s video limit. While anyone can use Quik, the free version only allows users to edit together two multi-clip videos, and create five events on their Mural wall. This should be just enough for most people to figure out if a subscription is worth it for them, though it's undoubtedly more worth it for GoPro owners.

Of course, if you’re frequently editing together slick video montages of your outdoor adventures to share online, there’s a good chance you already have a GoPro anyway.

Quik is available on both iOS and Android from Mar. 17.