Trimming video on iPhone (somewhat OT)

ShiroKuro

I'm sure many of you record with an iPhone. Just for clarity, mine is old (2021), it's a 12 Pro Max, and has the 18 (point whatever) iOS.

So, whenever I make a piano video, I find it to a bit of a pain in the rear to trim at the beginning and end, so I'm wondering if anyone else here who does this has any tips. Mainly my question is, why does it seem so hit or miss to get the yellow box up? Let me grab a screen shot to show what I'm talking about.
ETA this:

If you use an iPhone, you recognize this yellow box as the trim tool. Half the time I can't get the yellow box to appear, and that's the only way to trim. And when I do get it to appear, it's not clear what I did differently then the times when it doesn't appear. I've tried tapping, pressing and holding, moving my finger to different spots, it all just seems random and very buggy.

Am I doing something wrong? Does anyone have any tips?

This is the one thing I truly hate about sharing piano videos, everything else I have figured out... it ought to take about a minute, but often it feels like I'm "trial-and-error-ing" for 10 minutes before that yellow box even appears....

(10 minutes might be an exaggeration...)

Sgisela

ShiroKuro I always move my videos to iMovie for any editing. It’s very straightforward from there, and also lets me compress the size of the file to a much more reasonable size for uploading other places.

ShiroKuro

Sgisela I might try that. It just seems like it ought to be easier within the main app.
BTW does that compression impact the sound quality at all?

Sgisela

ShiroKuro not that I’ve noticed — I think it’s mostly the image quality, and honestly to capture me sitting at the piano, taking it down to 720p or 540p or whatever seems just fine.

ShiroKuro

Sgisela thank you!