How to Make a Video of Your Pet With Music

Last updated: February 2026

Most of us have hundreds of pet clips sitting in our camera roll: a zoomie here, a sleepy yawn there, half a second of a cat batting at a pen. On their own they rarely get watched again. Stitched together with a song and shared, they become the thing your family asks to see at every holiday.

This guide walks through the whole process: how to film so the footage is usable, which free tools add music without much fuss, what to know about song copyright before you post, and how to make an animated cartoon version of your pet with the Lohji app (App Store and Google Play). We also cover a less obvious payoff: clear, recent video of your pet is one of the most useful things you can have if they ever go missing.

Why is a pet video worth making?

The obvious reason to make a pet video is joy. Pets change fast. Puppies lose their oversized paws, kittens stop fitting in shoeboxes, and senior dogs slow down in ways that are easy to miss until you look back. A short edited video with music is far more likely to be rewatched than a folder of 400 raw clips.

The less obvious reason is practical. In that national telephone survey of 1,015 pet-owning households, researchers from the ASPCA and Ohio State found that about 14% of dogs and 15% of cats had been lost at least once in five years. Most came home: 93% of dogs and 75% of cats were recovered. But every one of those searches started with the same question from neighbors and shelters: what does your pet look like?

A video you made for fun answers that question better than any single photo. It shows how your dog moves, how big your cat is next to the couch, the white sock on one paw and the way their ears sit. Making a pet video is a small creative project that quietly doubles as an up-to-date ID file.

What shape and length should a pet video be?

Decide where the video will live before you film, because the shape is hard to fix later. Vertical video (9:16) fills a phone screen and suits Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Horizontal video (16:9) suits a TV, a laptop or a regular YouTube upload. Square (1:1) is a safe middle ground that looks fine almost anywhere.

YouTube’s own help center says that any video uploaded with a square or vertical aspect ratio up to three minutes long is classified as a Short. Inside the Lohji app, the video tools are built around the same three shapes, so you can match the clip to the platform before you generate it. Our side-by-side table of every option, with lengths and costs, is in the Lohji section below.

How do you film your pet so the footage is worth editing?

Good editing cannot rescue blurry, dark or top-down footage, so it pays to spend a few minutes setting up. You do not need a fancy camera. Every tip below works on a recent iPhone or Android phone, and if you want to capture what your pet does while you are out, our guide to the best pet cameras covers that side.

Start with your height. Professional photographers keep repeating the same advice: get down to your pet’s eye level. The American Kennel Club’s photography guides say it plainly, and the ASPCA Pet Health Insurance team notes that shots from your pet’s eye level are more engaging. In practice that means kneeling, sitting on the floor or lying on the grass. Shooting down from standing height makes every pet look small and turns their face into a forehead.

Next, find soft light. Natural window light indoors, shade outdoors, or the “golden hour” just after sunrise and before sunset all flatter fur and show eye color. Avoid the flash. Petfinder’s shelter photo tips point out that flash is what makes a dog’s eyes glow white or blue, and many pets find it startling.

Then get their attention, briefly. A treat held just above the lens, a squeaker in your free hand or a helper calling your pet’s name from behind you will pull their eyes toward the camera. Keep sessions short and happy. The AKC guide advises stopping when you see stress signals such as pinned-back ears, lip licking or a tucked tail.

A few camera settings make a big difference:

• Burst for stills. On iPhone, Apple’s support guide explains that dragging the shutter button toward the thumbnail fires a rapid burst so you can keep the one sharp frame from a fast-moving pet.
• Slo-mo for action. Slo-mo mode records normally and plays back slowly, and you can choose afterward which part of the clip slows down. A shake-off after a bath or a leap for a ball looks wonderful at half speed.
• Stabilize. Use a cheap phone tripod, brace your elbows on your knees, or turn on Action mode on iPhone models that have it. Apple notes Action mode works best in bright light.
• Tap to focus on the eyes. Sharp eyes matter more than anything else in the frame.
• Wipe the lens. A fingerprint smudge is the most common reason phone footage looks hazy.

Finally, think in short clips. Instead of one five-minute recording, capture lots of three- to ten-second moments: a close-up of the nose, a wide shot of the whole room, the tail wag at the door, the slow blink on the couch. Short clips are easier to cut to the beat of a song, and editors like Google Photos and iMovie arrange them more naturally. Hold the phone the way you plan to post: upright for Reels and TikTok, sideways for a TV or regular YouTube video. Rotating a finished horizontal clip into a vertical frame crops away most of your pet.

One more habit worth building: every few months, film your pet standing side-on in good light, then a close-up of the face and any markings. It takes thirty seconds, it gives you better material for your next edit, and it is exactly the kind of footage you would want on hand if they ever slipped out the door.

How do you add music to a pet video for free on your phone?

You probably already have a capable editor installed. Here is how the main free options work, based on each company’s own help pages.

iPhone Photos (Memories). Apple’s Photos app turns albums and collections into memory movies set to music. Make an album of your pet’s best clips, open it and play it as a memory. While it plays, tap the screen, then tap Customize. From there you can try Memory Looks, which pair a song with a matching photographic style, change the song, adjust the length to short, medium or long, and pick transitions such as crossfade. Apple Music subscribers can choose from the Apple Music catalog. On iPhones that support Apple Intelligence, you can also type a description, such as “Biscuit at the beach,” and Photos builds the movie for you.

Google Photos (Android and iPhone). Open the Create tab and choose Highlight video. Google’s help page explains that templates come prepackaged with music, text and beat-matching, or you can pick clips yourself and tap Create video. In the editor you can add or change music, choose which section of a song plays, balance the clip’s original audio against the soundtrack, add text, reorder clips and change the aspect ratio. Google added the redesigned editor and a music library in December 2025.

iMovie (iPhone and iPad). Apple’s free iMovie has a Magic Movie option that takes your chosen clips and photos and builds a movie with a soundtrack and transitions. Storyboard projects give you a shot list to follow, which is handy if you want a “day in the life of my dog” format.

CapCut. Popular with TikTok creators, CapCut runs on mobile, desktop and the web, and its help center notes that template search is available on the mobile and web versions.

“Be prepared to get down and get dirty. You need to shoot at eye level for best results, which means you are often flat on the ground in whatever conditions are on location.”

Laurie Clouthier, professional photographer, quoted by the American Kennel Club

How do you turn your pet into an animated cartoon video with Lohji?

If you want something your camera roll cannot produce, the free Lohji app turns one photo of your pet into a 3D, animated-movie-style character, then lets you animate that character and set it to music. It is made by Shiloh’s House, and it is called “Lohji: Cartoon Your Pet” on the App Store and “Lohji: Cartoon Pet Avatar” on Google Play. Our step-by-step guide to cartooning your pet with AI covers the character itself in more detail. Here is the video workflow from start to finish.

1. Sign up. Enter your phone number and the one-time text code. There is no password, and new accounts get 10 free Lohji Coins.
2. Make your pet’s Lohji (2 coins). Upload one clear photo of your dog, cat or other pet. You can add eye color, including two different colored eyes, distinguishing marks, or a bow or T-shirt. The reveal screen says “Say hello to” your pet’s name. If the first version is not quite right, Try Again costs 1 coin and Try a New Look costs 2.
3. Build a library. In Lohji Studio you can create scene images (3 coins) from 207 themes, such as Magic Carpet, Sushi Chef or Mars Rover, plus stickers, 9:16 phone wallpapers and 4K collector cards. Everything lands in your library.
4. Animate any image (5 coins). Pick an image from your library and choose a 6-second or 10-second clip in 1:1, 9:16 or 16:9. Choose 9:16 for Reels and TikTok, 16:9 for a TV or YouTube video, and 1:1 if you are not sure. Up to five generations can run at once, and a chime plays when each one finishes. If a generation fails, the coins are refunded automatically.
5. Stitch clips with Mini Movie (free). Select between 2 and 10 of your videos and Mini Movie joins them into one MP4.
6. Play a Lohji Slideshow (free). The slideshow shuffles your stickers, cards, videos and images with bounce, pop, spin and flip entrances, sparkles and confetti, and opens with an intro card showing your pet’s name. The soundtrack is generated live inside the app in three moods: playful, dreamy or chill. You can also mute it.
7. Tap “Share as movie” (free). The app records the slideshow to an MP4 and opens your share sheet, so you can send it straight to Instagram, WhatsApp or your Photos app.
8. Share a link. Videos also get public pages with rich previews, so a link dropped into iMessage, Facebook or X shows your pet’s clip instead of a bare URL.

Here is how the options compare at a glance, alongside two free tools from YouTube and Google.

New Lohji accounts start with 10 free coins, which covers one character and one animated clip with coins to spare. Coins are sold as one-time packs (40 for $2.99, 95 for $6.99 and 210 for $14.99) that never expire. There is no subscription and the app has no ads. You can add unlimited pets to one account, which helps if you have a whole household to animate.

The same character works well beyond video. You can turn it into a pet phone wallpaper, a custom pet watch face or a collectible pet trading card, then drop those into the slideshow too. If you are comparing apps first, see our roundup of the best apps to cartoon your pet.

How do recent photos and video help if your pet gets lost?

Every major lost-pet guide asks for the same thing first: a recent, clear picture. The ASPCA’s lost pet guide tells owners to walk the neighborhood with a recent photo, visit shelters in person with photos for staff, and build a flyer around a clearly printed, recent image. American Humane Society lists keeping recent photos on hand as a basic step for protecting pets before they ever go missing.

Technology has made those pictures even more useful. Petco Love Lost, a free national database, lets you upload a photo of a lost cat or dog, and its photo-matching technology compares size, color, facial features and coat attributes against found-pet listings from shelters and neighbors. A sharp, front-facing frame grabbed from one of your videos is exactly what that kind of search needs.

So keep a “lost pet kit” album: one face-on close-up, one full-body side view, a shot of any unique markings, and a short clip of your pet walking. Update it whenever your pet’s look changes after a haircut, weight change or new collar. If the worst happens, our checklists for the first 60 minutes after a dog goes missing and for finding a lost cat walk you through what to do next. You can also put your pet’s photo or Lohji right on the profile a finder sees, using the same Lohji app on iPhone or Android.

Can you use any song in a pet video?

Not always, and it depends on where the video goes. A video you keep on your phone or send to your mom is very different from one you post publicly. Songs are copyrighted, and platforms scan uploads for copyrighted audio.

The safest route is to use the music library built into whatever app you are posting from or editing in. YouTube’s help center says standard channels can use any song in the Shorts Audio Library, most of them for up to 90 seconds of a three-minute Short, and that royalty-free tracks from the YouTube Audio Library will not receive a Content ID claim. It also warns that a Short longer than one minute with an active copyright claim is blocked globally.

Built-in editor music comes with its own rules. Google’s help page for highlight videos states that any music accompanying that content is for personal, non-commercial use only. In other words, it is fine for a birthday video of your dog, but not for an ad for your dog-walking business.

The Lohji Slideshow sidesteps much of this, because its soundtrack is generated inside the app rather than borrowed from a commercial song. You can still mute it and add a track from your posting platform’s library if you prefer.

Frequently asked questions