If you want full control and flexibility, you can skip this section, BUT with little to no editing experience required, there are affordable programs out there that can save you a tone of time and money…
– great for animations like Powtoon (pictured above), Animaker or vyond
– great for whiteboard scribble like videos like VideoScribe
– great for simple explainer or punchy testimonial videos Magisto or Biteable ,
to name a few, all allow you to select pre-made templates and have professional looking titles and texts and come up with a short video.
With Powtoon pictured above, I managed within about 30 mins to create a VERY draft animation, it took me about a day to get the hang of the software, and I’d say that if I had to produce a finished product it would only be a matter of days, to think up the idea, look at the stock footage or animation characters, find the music, load up all the company logos, fonts etc. and publish.
THE GOOD NEWS …
1) Cheaper than hiring a freelancer – they all entice you for annual vs monthly payment and offer packages based on video-duration limits, usage licence, stock library access etc.
eg.
PowToon €228/yr or €348/yr depending on the stock library access
Magisto – (includes Vimeo Pro where you can show your videos without ads) $120-$408/yr for vids up to 10mins long and includes a huge Getty images istock library and has a reasonable monthly payment option
Biteable – €348/yr for 3 videos per month or $180/yr 1 video per month – good stock library of videos but upload one file at a time.
2) Saves time – assuming you have fairly simple clear storyboard of photos, video clips all running along a single music track
3) Easy to create a ‘template’ title animation and endings etc. and re-use it eg. for different products eg. Biteable has some nice title animations if you buy the top package, but then lacks in other areas.
ARE ANY OF THESE SHOWSTOPPERS FOR YOU?
1) Audio in most case is restricted to one music piece, with no ability to pick only certain parts of it, no ability for additional audio tracks and in some cases not even for narration alongside music. Tricky also to do precise audio cutting eg. if you are editing an interview, or removing hums and errhs.. and you can’t fade the music at different places
3) You can’t have multiple layers of video so it’s hard to work with multiple camera angles, or lots of cuts. Some packages eg. Magisto, allow a main video eg. an interview and a ‘b-roll’ where images will appear over the narration which is ample for simple interviews. But you can’t easily tell it when to come in and out of the b-roll. You can’t film on green screens and then replace the background
4) Depending on the price plan, restrictions on duration of videos and number of videos you can export.
5) Most packages won’t even allow you to change the duration of the ‘slide’ to exactly what you want either than for the whole video pace (fast, med, slow)
6) Some packages eg. biteable won’t let you upload all your media in one go, you have to do it one at a time, and when you edit you can’t move multiple clips together
7) You won’t be able to manipulate the audio you choose inside the software, eg. if you choose a piece that’s longer than your video sometimes you want to pick certain parts of it.. you’ll need to do this externally, and import the final version.
8) Not much flexibility with texts other than font. If you choose something where a box of text comes in, you may be restricted on how many letters it can fit, and won’t allow you to have eg. the lower line smaller font, or fancy lower thirds (interview names) depending on the package.
2) BEGINNER VIDEO EDITORS