Strum Reviewed: Slick Video Sharing App Changes Look and Sound

With a touch of Strum, a new social video app, you can make your videos sing — literally. Social music app developer Smule wants to autotune the world with its latest free app for iOS.

Using Strum, you can apply filters to any 15-second (or shorter) video clip. While similar apps Viddy and SocialCam can change the look of videos, Strum goes a step further with audio filters.

After adding an existing video clip or shooting a new one through Strum, you can pick from more than 20 filters, more than either Viddy or SocialCam offer. Each filter has its own look and sound. Some, like the Flow filter, will autotune whatever you say during the video, making it sound like you're singing with heavy effects on your voice (think T-Pain). Many of the filters will also loop shorter videos, changing the look and sound slightly with each repetition.

Like Viddy and SocialCam, Strum is simple to use. It applies filters quickly so you can try variations and find the best match. You'll want to test out several, because you never know what Strum will do. In some cases this random element makes a normal video funny, while at other times a filter like "Bonfire" will add moody music and a soft focus give your video an arthouse cinema feel.

And sometimes it doesn't change the video much at all. The "Museless" filter seems only to remove some color saturation from the video, without making any changes to the sound.

Because you can't tweak what the filters do, Strum probably won't appeal to you if who have a specific vision in mind. Other social video apps like Viddy, however, let you apply visual filters and add music separately, which gives you more control. But it can be fun to see what Strum turns random video elements into.

You can share your video with the Strum community or post it to Facebook or Twitter. You can also email a link to friends so they can see it on Smule's website. Within the Strum app, people can favorite and comment on videos, as in Instagram.

You can certainly kill some time watching what other people have done with the filters. But at 15 seconds a pop, you won't waste that much time. It's hard to get bored watching something so short, and sometimes the videos can make you smile as they take an odd turn, thanks to the filters.