Two New Video Creators: Videze and VideoRobot
Hugh’s Rating Scale:
5 Stars – an absolute champ, must have
4 Stars – worth more than the price paid
3 Stars – worth the price
2 Stars – didn’t deliver as promised
1 Star – stay as far away from as possible
This week I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing and using two new video creation tools and I wanted to bring you my findings. The two new tools are Videze and Video Robot. Videze launched earlier this week and Video Robot will be launching next week. VideoRobot currently has some interesting pre-launch activities that you may want to check out.
I actually found both of these tools to be delightful and fun to use and both of them deliver high quality videos very easily but they are slightly different in their approach, I can explain for you so you can make a good decision which one to buy - or both - or neither. Whatever the case, I do think you should make the decision independently of each other, and not just decide to get one over the other. They both have distinct advantages and might be worth a couple Andrew Jacksons just to have both of them in your arsenal.
Why Get Either of Them?
There's no question that in my marketing, I need as much good video content as I can get my hands on for promoting my businesses. It's true my software TapVIDz creates and posts new videos for me on auto-pilot, but I do need "seed" material and the seed material could be literally any kind of video content that gets my message across. I've used camtasia screen share videos, webcam personal style videos, powerpoint presentations and even Adobe After Effects. The fact is, if a new video tool is available, I will get my hands on it and just start creating promo vids for my music or whatever.
Regarding my own video tools, such as Vidworkz, TapVIDz etc. - long ago I decided that I would not create a template-based video tool. Both of these tools are template-based - what that means is that all the content is pre-created in projects which receive your input in the form of your text such as your company name and your images such as your company logo, then those videos are rendered based on the pre-defined templates but are now unique because they have your text and your logo. That's why these videos look so good when they come out- because they are already created by experts before hand, and your data is simply inserted and rendered into the project for output.
My own personal decision was to work more on videos based on algorithms rather than templates. I'm working on such a video creator now that should be nice. But in the meantime you need to have video content, so it behooves me to poke around beneath the hood on these new tools and provide you with an honest review. So here goes!
1. My Review of Videze by Mo Miah and John Gibb (the Terminators)
(click here to read my review of VideoRobot lower on this page)
So let's look at Videze: Once I logged in, I was impressed by the simplicity of the layout, I enjoyed the purple color scheme as well as how easy it is to check out all the kinds of videos you can make. You can create logos, motion titles, explainer videos, and some nice slideshow type animations with zooming titles and things like that. They do have a lot of nice stuff and if you can pick it up for less than 50 bucks then it's probably a good deal just to have it in your arsenal.
With Videze, you can make quick logo reveals, motion text titles and so on. Here's an example of a title sequence I created in about 5 minutes. I think it's really nice. My only complaint is that you are more or less forced to put in a lot of lines when you might just want one title and then go away - I ran out of things to say so I started using lines from Frank Zappa songs lol...
There's going to be some getting used to around what text to put where and so forth but once you get the hang of it the output is quite nice. Here's a logo reveal from Videze:
I have to say I think it's a little similar to Viddyoze so if you do have Viddyoze you might not want to spend money on Videze. But you could certainly impress clients with your ability to create animations of their logos and quickly put together pro looking video clips. Videze also has something called Live Mockups, which is kind of interesting -- basically it allows you to grab a high quality video clip from their library and then it overlays one of your images on top of it. They all come with nice sound effects so if you could get one laid over with say a client's logo it looks kind of like a quick advert on tv. Here's an example of what they call a "live mockup" video 15 second clip. You can see my little logo appearing after the bubbles all disappear:
Videze also has what they call Slideshow templates that actually create a full movie, but it's kind of strict - you have to really learn exactly where the pictures go and what text goes where and then tailor your input to exactly match what they want you to put in there. For example, some text fields 0nly allow 2 characters (what?) so that kind of doesn't make much sense to me. And other text fields are strictly limited in length - 50% of the time I was not able to put in the text I actually wanted, so I edited it until the program allowed it. I suppose this is necessary when you're pasting people text on top of heavily templated video projects. So you could spend a lot of time with these templates getting the know them, and then pump out some nice videos... here is an example of one I made in about 10 minutes... I had to edit and re-queue about 3 times and still it's not quite right, but it definitely shows some promise:
I mean, it definitely feels good to see my pics and info presented in this manner. My problem with it is that it's a template, so other people will have the same formula - although certainly different content. It does look good. And as you can see it will take a little more work to get everything in the right place. And I was able to add my own music. So that's one of the several slideshow templates they have available in the front end product. I do see there is a template club with a monthly subscription that will be an upsell so you can get a bunch of new templates each month. It just might be worth it, that template is quite nice.
Just so you fully understand how these programs are made, there are definitely people on the other end who hand-craft these templates in something like Adobe After Effects. AE may very well be the back end engine of any of these platforms since it does have programmable hooks. The problem is in scaling enough servers to support the rendering because AfterEffects is a huge CPU hog - it's definitely not something you want running on your own computer 24/7. That's the reason why it's expensive to run a video platform like this, and if you can get in at a one time price it's really kind of a blessing. And of course you need to keep fresh with the templates otherwise your competition will be using all the new templates.
At the end of the day, with the addition of the slideshow templates and the explainer video projects, Videze creates clips and full videos that you can then download and use in other projects or standalone. As I mentioned, the slideshow animations are nice and very satisfying. I did try an explainer-type video and I found it to be quite limited. I discovered that it's really strict on the types of business in the templates (I was trying to do a cleaning service but it got forced into an IT service lol)
Although it did work, it's not very flexible. But kudos on programming up some explainer videos without having to do it on my own computer in After Effects. I will say when I did see my explainer video after it rendered, I kind of got a big laugh out of it 🙂 because apparently I misunderstood where the titles would go. But I figure a few times through it and I'll get it right, when I have time. But it's not like you can compose your own explainer videos. I'm still waiting for that tool 😉 perhaps I'll create one, one day.
Overall, Videze could be useful for creating video content and clips you might use for something else (like my TapVIDz for example 🙂 I'm not sure how large the template library is or how much they plan on adding to it, but I'd hope that their templates would get better and with a larger selection, over time. I also noticed there is a locked level of templates that you have to pay extra for. So beware of that if that kind of thing annoys you 😉 It's probably part of the sales funnel if you click through.
Hugh's Rating for Videze: 3.8 Stars
Pros: thumbs up for ease of use and smoothness of UI
Can easily create nice animations, logos and title sequences
Nice HD Content
probably worth a few bucks just to have in your arsenal.
Cons: Not a lot of bells and whistles but it works well.
2. Video Robot by Todd Gross and Paul Ponna
Todd Gross is known as the largest "Gross"-ing affiliate 🙂 on JVZoo and also was a famous weatherman, portrayed by an actor in the movie "The Perfect Storm". I've been lucky to know Todd personally since 2012 and I've always know him to be a standup guy, in fact I've hired him to do voice overs for me and he's always done a great job. He's also know for putting out tons of video software and he's recently partnered with Paul Ponna.
Paul Ponna I've only met recently but I know him to be apparently somewhat of a genius behind some really good video-on-demand software in recent years, including "Video Wave" in which he partnered with the owners of Videze (mentioned above) and he's also behind some of the "animatronics" in previously released gems like VideoPal and VideoBuilder.
Paul has figured out how to run systems that can give you live previews in-browser of videos you're creating and editing -- while you're creating them. This is not an easy programming task and I applaud Paul for creating these programs in which it happens so flawlessly. Video Robot is another such gem, and to be honest, has some similar features that were in their release of Video Builder last year around this time.
Sometimes one might ask, why not just make Video Builder better - why put out a whole new software? I'm going to be honest here - it's hard to keep putting economic value into a customer base from whom you are no longer collecting income. Sad fact. So software companies have to come up with ways to continue to receive income so they can support their customers across the board. I'm not sure if you know this, but it's extremely expensive to maintain servers that render other people's videos for them 24/7.
And in all fairness, after getting to know VideoRobot I have to say it is a very different software than VideoBuilder - the reason is that it is specifically designed to create template avatar videos, specialized for local marketing. And it definitely does that with all kinds of bells and whistles.
First of all, they boast the following content available out of the box:
- Â 100+ '3D Avatar Explainer' Video Templates
- Â 100+ 'Kinetic Motion Animation' Templates
- Â 100+ 'Whiteboard' Video Templates
- Â Blank Canvas to Create Videos From Scratch
I've spent what time I have available going through these as best I can, and from what I can see they are not exactly what I would call "explainer" videos but more like first-person sales pitches for local businesses, pre-created for you in the hottest local niches. But they are nice and they come in both male and female avatars, and they have a translation system built in so you can market to literally any local audience world-wide.
Paul has perfected the art of making the animated characters mouth movements perfectly match the voice over track of the video, so that's cool. The other thing they've apparently mastered is the ability to export animated text effects and that's a very big part of Video Robot - mainly that's what I'm seeing in the "Kinetic Motion Animation" templates offered. And some whiteboard-type sketch in (minus the hands). The main apparatus involved in the text animation is a new library that I myself have recently discovered that allows vector animations to be exported as javascript so it's way easier to preview them in a browser and then render them into video on the server-side.
As you can see from the screenshot there are a lot of moving parts and variables you can play with on these videos. I'm going to let Paul's explainer video do the hard work of explaining it all but you can see a couple of videos I whipped together in about 2 minutes each.
Ralph Spoilsport Motors
Hugh's HVAC
Video Robot gives you the ability to do more than just create clips - actually it's all about creating full movies. You can do it pretty easily if you just let them do the talking and follow their script. It gets a little more involved when you start trying to do your own composing without any template. But it's certainly doable in VideoRobot using what they call the "revolutionary" blank template which allows you to start from zero in creating your video.
One of the cool things about VideoRobot is that for each video, you can select a custom intro and outro which is kind of a logo reveal so it's kind of like having a built-in Videze or Viddyoze logo reveal creator built right into the software. The only disadvantage of that is that you can't export the logo reveals, intros and outros as separate clips - they are always going to be attached to the main video you're creating. Perhaps that's good or perhaps later they'll give us the ability to export the cool looking intro and outro logo reveals as separate clips too.
Other limitations: only a few I've come up against - you can't export to animated GIF without upgrading to a higher price level. Similarly you can't export in 1080p HD but you CAN export in 720p HD out of the box so that's not a problem for me.
Click here to get involved with the VideoRobot pre-launch, including a chance to win a free copy.
Hugh's Rating for VideoRobot: 4.0 Stars
Pros:Â Well thought out UI
Lots of moving parts, yet very well organized
TONS of templates, avatars, voice options
Create full videos including intros, outros and text animations
If you like avatar videos and do offline business I think this is a must-have.
Cons: if you don't do avatar videos or offline business then you won't be using 80% of the program.
Comparison of Videze and VideoRobot: definitely two different animals. Videze makes quick clips from highly templated material such as logos and titles. VideoRobot has entire scripts for local offline business and animated avatars speaking the script and a lot more control over how the videos come out. So you could actually use Videze to create a logo and then use Video Robot to create a service offering video for a local plumber or whatever. Videze does animations in the style of Adobe After Effects. VideoRobot has its own style of avatar animation and a new interface to a newer text animation library but not as much HD animation as Videze.
And I'm sure you could use either one to create a non-templated something-or-other if your business doesn't quite fit the templates. But if you're within the top 100 most marketed niches for local business you're probably covered by both of them.
I hope this review has helped you - please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or comments.
-Hugh
March 3 2018