There are two types of video editing: casual and pro. Pro editing often requires pricey software and a steep learning curve. Casual editing is the simple bolting together of clips and music, either for social media or personal purposes. We don’t gather around slide projectors in darkened rooms like our parents and grandparents did, but we do gather around tablets and phones to share slideshows and videos.
But the landscape of personal video assembly is changing, and the casual side of things is starting to embrace the more pro world of social media. How, without any video training, do you become semi-pro with your video media? By using smart tools to make it easy, such as InVideo Online Video Editor, which we take a look at in this review.
This is a sponsored article and was made possible by InVideo. The actual contents and opinions are the sole views of the author who maintains editorial independence even when a post is sponsored.
Simple Video Power
InVideo Online Video Editor is ostensibly an online video-editing web app, but on closer inspection, it’s much more than that. Although you can start from scratch with a blank canvas, included with the InVideo tools are over 4000 pre-built templates for you to customize.
The templates cover a baffling array of categories, from brand promos and adverts to offers, presentations and listicles. Actually, there’s almost so many that it’s hard to pick a handful to mention let alone talk about. In each category or collection of templates there are three different template types: 16:9 wide, square and 9:16 vertical.
There are also three categories of video: pre-set templates, blank canvas, and another type of video very popular especially on social media, the text-to-video style.
To start making videos today, select your template and format, then click “Use This Template.” The video is opened up for you to start changing text, video and music assets. InVideo also includes access to some professional free and paid stock assets, like video and music, which you can use to personalize and customize the output videos to your liking.
Editing Smarter
It’s easy to get a little bit overwhelmed with the enormous amount of choice of media included with InVideo. When there’s so much gorgeous media that you can just tweak and present as your own, it’s very tempting to just do so, yet viewers know what stock video looks like and how it differs from personally-filmed videos.
But being original is not necessarily what InVideo is for. It’s for getting your message across quickly and easily and providing professional, clean, smoothly-edited clips to accompany your words. Video by the yard. But I also see it not as a way to avoid using your own creativity, but a way to stimulate and encourage it. More on that in a moment.
The interface is very simple: the clips are on the left and the timeline on the bottom. On the top right you have a preview of what you’re editing, and this is where you play back the video you are making to check the timing and flow. It’s pretty standard stuff.
What’s not standard is the amazing array of assets – all in a form that you can edit and mix to your own tastes. Stretching out clips and adding them together is easy and intuitive using the mouse to pull handles at the ends of the clips. Drag and drop to the timeline, and the ghost image of the clip rests on the timeline till you let go.
Next, you’re presented with a method of trimming to your tastes before you insert it. Seriously, you don’t need any kind of manual to work this – it couldn’t be more obvious.
InVideo presents the new video maker with an interesting choice. You can use the templates and assets as they are and never bother to add to to them because you have everything you need to put your message across. That’s a valid way to use it, and if that’s all you do, you’ll get a lot of value out of it. But then there’s the next level, where you use the editing features to learn how these templates are put together and gradually replace all the stock assets with your own, merely using InVideo as your editing platform.
Either way, InVideo is a brilliant and easy way to get started and dip a toe (or your whole leg if you want to) into the complex world of video editing. Plus, you can create infinite media by the yard for your personal web site, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or your private use.
Availability
InVideo Online Video Editor is available in three flavors: Free, Business and Unlimited. Free gives you features such as reseller rights, unlimited users, full access to all editing features, curated templates, image and standard video library and automated text to speech. You also have up to 10GB of storage on the site, and free accounts are not watermarked in any way, which is a huge tick in the plus column.
Upgrading to the paid programs gives you all that you get on the free plan plus access to premium content. It also ups the amount of videos you can make, the storage, etc. Full details are on the web site, but in short, the upgrade to Business costs $30 per month and Unlimited costs $60, with about 50% off if you bill yearly rather than monthly.
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