The “Instant Video Articles” software, from Calvin Woon & Jonathan Teng, will be the subject of the first post in a new series called “I Buy, Try, And Review” (what I’m trying to accomplish here is pretty self-explanatory, but if you’d like a little more information about these reviews, and my thoughts for putting them together, please click here!).
I don’t really remember how I stumbled on this software, but since it deals with video creation and the leveraging of existing content – something I’m very interested in at the moment (as witnessed by the series of video marketing and creation articles on the site) I thought I’d plunk down my credit card and give it the old “test-run.”
Especially since Instant Video Articles claims to be able to “convert your articles into tracking-sucking videos in under 30 seconds.”
In my experience marketing online with video, one of the keys to capitalizing on this medium is being able to create videos quickly and effectively. The net is awash with millions of very entertaining videos. So your creation is going to go head to head against a ton of competition, as well as folks with extremely short attention spans and “itchy” mouse fingers.
So there’s really not a lot of point in spending days creating a masterpiece that no one will watch. In my opinion, it’s better to quickly create as many short, pithy videos and target as many different keywords and topics (related to your niche) as you can.
Before I begin… what should be pointed out here is that you’re not creating videos as much as you are creating a slideshow; a series of still images strung along on a timeline. No worries; I’ve created plenty of videos like this and they can be effective (here’s an example of mine that has received 3,500 views on YouTube). It’s just that this software does not offer the ability to import or display actual video footage shot on a camcorder.
How does the software work?
If there’s one thing this product has going for it, it’s ease of use. I’m used to using Camtasia for video creation, and in comparison, this product keeps things simple by offering relatively few options. The entire video-creation process is constrained to 3 simple tabs…
- Slides: For every image in your video, you create a slide. You add your text to slide, customize the font size and color to your needs, and even add a customized table if you like. Once you have enough text on one slide, you create a new one and so on until you’ve completed your article (when you finish your project, the software will string these slides together as images, giving the impression of a video).
- Backgrounds: Here’s where you can customize the look of each slide by selecting a background. This can be a solid color, a gradient, or a custom image (when I inserted an image, it ended up tiling the entire background with it).
- General Options: Here’s where you select the duration of the playback of each slide in your video as well as choosing a soundtrack (optional).
Creating the video: Putting my series of slides together was easy enough, although I was a little annoyed that the text formatting changes I made on the initial slide weren’t being carried through to new slides, even though the changes were highlighted in the tool. For example, I changed to an Arial font and 4-point size and for every new slide I’d have to re-select these options, even though they appeared to be the current options chosen. There is a way to get around this…
Format your initial slide the way you want, and create duplicate (there’s a single-button option for this) for all new slides. Cut and paste your new text over the previous material and the font changes are retained! Presto!
As a background, I used a solid color (black) to keep things consistent with my current Camtasia-created slideshow type videos (here’s an example from YouTube).
Selecting the duration of each slide: Using the “General Options” tab, determine how long the software will display each slide before moving on to the next. Here’s where this product’s limitations start to show.
For instance, how do you know how long to display each slide before moving on? In software like Camtasia, you simply play the video within the software, read along with the production and chose the most appropriate setting for each individual slide.
With Instant Video Articles not only can you not playback the video within the software, your choice of article duration time applies to every single slide in the video.
Not so good.
For example, suppose one slide has a lot of text and takes 5-7 seconds to read. And suppose the following slide contains a single sentence that takes 2 seconds to read. You need to select the slide duration that will ensure your viewer has enough time to read the most text-heavy slide you have in your video. That means that for the second short slide, they’ll have to wait 5 seconds until the next transition.
This may not sound like much, but in reality, it’s an eternity. And it will pretty much guarantee your viewer will be on his/her way somewhere else.
Plus, you have to guess on what is the ideal duration for your slides. For me, it also meant I had to go back and alter a number of slides, to ensure all contained the appropriate amount of information to fit my duration selection. Plus, I had to render the video an extra time or two when I discovered my selected slide duration was too long/short.
Adding a soundtrack: Using the “General Options” tab, it’s a simple process to select an appropriate MP3 or .wav file to play as a background for your video (make sure you have the rights to the music, or obtain some royalty free music).
There’s a couple of problems with this part of the process…
- Since there’s no time line, you have to manually determine the length of your video by counting the number of slides you use by the time selected for slide duration. For example, if you’re using 15 slides with a 5-second duration, your video is 75 seconds long.
- There’s very little help in the software, so it’s not evident whether the software will cut off, fade out or eliminate any additional material on your music soundtrack. When I added a 2 minute MP3 to my 55 second video, I ended up with 60 seconds of blank screen showing after the video ended, while the soundtrack continued playing in the background.
This meant I needed to modify the track in my editing software, before re-adding it to the video, hoping it wouldn’t be a hair short or long compared to the video time line. Not a big deal, but it certainly meant that my “traffic-sucking” video was taking a LOT longer than 30 seconds to create.
How did the final product turn out? You decide…
Did you notice the other issues?
That’s correct…
First, the Instant Video Articles software does not insert transitions between slides. When I create slide show videos in software like Camtasia, I use a short transition between each slide, which causes them to flow together much more smoothly. Take a look at the same video done in Camtasia (here with a new soundtrack), and see how the slides fade slowly into one another?…
In contrast, the slides in the Instant Video Articles software simply “appear” which makes the video seem – to me at least – choppy and unprofessional. In my opinion, this software’s end result could be significantly improved by building a simple “fade” transition between slides.
Second, now that I can finally view the video in the Vzaar player, I can see that the text is TOO DARN SMALL, even though it appeared to be “just right” on the slides as I created them. That means I have to go back into the software, increase the font size, adjust the text formatting on the slide accordingly, and re-render the video. Argh!
Alright, here’s the video with the changes made…
A little better, huh?
OK, now that you know what Instant Video Articles does and how it delivers, let’s quickly review the pros and cons…
The “Pros”…
- Extremely easy to use, almost no technical knowledge is required.
- Short learning curve.
- Product is very affordable – only $17!
- Creates a decent quality video relatively quickly.
The “Cons”…
- No video import
- No time line
- No playback within software-you have to complete and render your video to see how it will “view”.
- No control over individual slides
- Limited functionality and flexibility
As you can see, the list of “cons” is pretty extensive. However, one thing you need to keep in mind is Instant Video Articles costs about 1/16 the price of professional video software solutions like Camtasia, so it’s not really a fair comparison. In my opinion, the Instant Video Articles is good value for the money, and, if you can live with its shortcomings, probably worth investigating – especially if you’re on a tight budget (you can learn more about Instant Video Articles here!).
A word to the wise though…
The simple conversion of articles into video format is not going to lead to huge swarms of traffic to your web site. What you’ll end up with is long, boring, unappealing videos that no one will watch to the end. Instead, create short, compelling “teaser” videos that lead naturally to click-through to your site – read how to do it here!
Related posts:
Great post by you and thanks for sharing your views on the Instant Video Articles software. Tanks again.