Avid’s jumping on board the iPad bandwagon with its first foray into video editing.

Avid’s interface is very clean and simple, but it’s obviously designed to be used in landscape. All the media stored on your iPad is displayed top left and sorted by type: videos, photos and music, along with more app-specific sections like transitions, montage (advanced slideshow-like effects for photos) and titles. If you own an iPad 2, you can also use its built-in cameras straight from within the app. Annoyingly enough, there’s no way to rotate a clip, should it have been recorded in the wrong orientation.

Strangely, the app description states that you can access media from external devices thanks to the iPad Camera Connection Kit, but this merely refers to the iPad’s standard import process: you won’t be able to access files that haven’t been copied onto your iPad first.

What’s even more frustrating is the fact that you have to rebuild the media library each and every time you add a new clip to your camera roll. Even if it’s a single photo, the entire library has to be rebuilt, which can take some time.

The main part of the interface is devoted to the editing section that is subdivided into two: the storyboard and the timeline. These work hand in hand: the storyboard shows each clip as a square, and you can easily reorder them by dragging them; the timeline offers a more traditional display of rectangles — the wider the rectangle, the longer the direction. This is where you can trim your clips for that perfec edit. Aside from the embedded sound that comes with your video clips, you can also work with three additional audio layers to add a soundtrack (which doesn’t need to start at the beginning of your project) or sound effects — Avid Studio comes with a large selection for you to experiment with.

If you own Avid Studio for the PC, you can export your work to carry on your edit. You can also

save your final edit to the iPad’s camera roll, or share it via email, Facebook or YouTube. There’s a big downside to results though.

Despite accepting clips shot with an iPhone 4S (which records at 1080p), it will only export your finished project as 720p.