These days you can’t get far without videos to get your message out – and whether it’s for your TV channel or for YouTube, we want our videos to look great and to be able to produce them easily…
…and if you’re like me, you’ve probably struggled to find the screen capture / video editing tool that is right for you. I am NOT a video professional, I don’t have a month to spare with my nose in the training manuals, and I definitely do NOT want to pay ongoing fees for PowToons, GoAnimate and similar video-creation tools. Let me share with you the tools that I’ve been using, and what to expect out of them:
- Adobe Premiere
Great choice for professionals, less so for the rest of us.
It has lots of options, and requires a BIG investment in time to master it, and in money to buy it. Personally, I find it not just un-intuitive, but counter-intuitive – it never does what I expect it to do, and I don’t have the time to take a month off to learn a thing or two about it. - Camtasia
A neat program, with 2 issues: Windows version is a lot better than the Mac version, and every now and then a part of the video becomes blurry when rendered. Don’t know why. Priced around $300. - Video Motion Pro
The great tool for ‘the rest of us’, who want something that gets the job done, and can be used instantly, without having to waste any time going through manuals. Priced $49 to $67 depending on what you want. Below is the hangout I’ve done with Brian from IRevealTV, show-casing the key features of the program:
Check out Video Motion Pro: more info, download and training
Here are the 3 things I like the most about Video Motion Pro:
- Simplicity
It truly shines! It took me 10 minutes to render my first video, complete with the intro, lower third animation, and the outro – and I did not have to consult the manual once. - Functionality
To be precise, I love the intros: lots of them to choose from, add your logo and text and you’re done. I love the lower third animations, it’s a great way to introduce the speaker or a product. I love the outros, they’re beautifully animated, you just add your stuff and insert the outro at the end of your video. - Price
I don’t know for how long the launch prices will hold, but right now it’s a sweet deal 🙂 It costs less than one quarter of what you’d pay for Clematis.
Here are the things I’d like to see improved:
- It would be awesome to have the noise removal option. My laptop has the cooling fan that gets noisy in summertime, and I’d like to be able to get rid of the whirring noise.
- When you add the lower third animation, it is represented as a black oval on the timeline. Since the background is dark, it makes it hard to see. Perhaps there’s an option to be able to fix this, but I could not find it.
- By default, the lower third animation is inserted into the timeline below the other streams. Because of this, it appears under the main video and cannot be seen, until you drag it above the video. It would make sense to place it on top to start with, that way you wouldn’t have to drag it there.
Let’s face it, no software is perfect – but in this case what you get, which is the complete solution for screen capture and video editing, far outweighs the occasional rough edge that you can go around.
Check out Video Motion Pro: more info, download and training
Enjoy!
Alex
