Adobe After Effects allows users to create cinematic movie titles, intros, and transitions, remove an object from a clip, start a fire or make it rain, or animate a logo or character. The vendor states that with After Effects, users can apply motion-graphics and animation to any digital object.
$20.99
Per User Per Month
VideoScribe
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
British company Sparkol offers VideoScribe, a video editing application supporting whiteboard style animations and presentations.
I would recommend Adobe After Effects to a colleague above all other comparable software that I have used, however, with the caveat that it can be time-consuming to learn to use and can be frustrating if you are not familiar with the software. Difficulty aside, once you begin to understand how to use Adobe After Effects, it is the only software for the job.
If you need to spice up your presentations but don't have the money/budget/team for full video production or animation, this software is for you. In skilled hands it can also look as good if not better than productions that would cost 5-6x more, including turnaround time. I think the basics of video still apply here, you want to have a story, a narrative, some storyboarding and an idea of where you want to go, but the tools this software provides will help you achieve that (and edit it later) quickly and efficiently
Adobe After Effects allows you to exercise a great level of control over how to animate just about every aspect of an object. You can control animation speed of entry and exit, the direction of rotation, scale, position, and so many more attributes.
Adobe After Effects is so popular that you can find so many paid and free third-party plug-ins and scripts to incorporate into your project.
There is such a breadth and depth of features available in Adobe After Effects, you will never get tired of exploring the program and using its many features to take your projects to new heights
Adobe After Effects works well with other products in the Adobe Creative Suites including, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Media Encoder
Adobe After Effects allows you to customize the setup of your workspace and panels
It's fast and customizable! You can import your own vector graphics and PNGs to utilize or take advantage of their huge library of resources, from graphics to icons and sound
You don't have to have a background in animation or graphics (though it doesn't hurt) to utilize the program, really expanding who in your company can take advantage of it
The support and resource documentation is amazing. From multiple series of videos to text-based help and I believe if i remember correctly even emails when I first signed up, it's hard to feel frustrated or lost with how to start with all the support available
Some of the vector rendering for imported pieces could still use work, I've discovered a workaround for adding a stroke to images to help smooth the edge but this can be tiring
The PNG rendering often seems to be under a super heavy compression and can pixellate even higher-res images that are brought in. I utilize almost exclusively custom created graphics to use in this program so seeing that fixed would be great
It would be nice if there was a super-basic audio editor in the program, even something that didn't do much but let you edit the start and end of clips
I will renew my use of After Effects since it's affordable and always has been reliable. They also always continue to update new features and add new things to compete with other software out there. I also like all the 3rd party plugins out there that keep my interest for the future and new toolsets and creative solutions.
There's a lot of features and functionality that Adobe After Effects offers that can be hard to navigate at times. Depending on the depth you plan to use the software for, that can take some time to learn. The built-in templates and tutorials really help soften that learning curve. Once you get past some of the basics, it's fairly simple to use.
Adobe customer support is wonderful. They genuinely care about their product and the end user experience. The products they create have always been innovative and continue to improve. They have a huge chunk of the user market in their field and still strive to improve. This is such a big deal for me and other small business/organizations that need their products and don't have a large voice on our own.
I find Adobe After Effects to be superior to iMovie and Final Cut Pro in that I am able to do much more with the software. It isn't as limiting as the other two. I also like that it isn't an Apple product. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Apple. There is a bigger learning curve with After Effects, but once you get the hang of it, there's really no comparison.
Every video or graphics program has its own purposes, VideoScribe is very specifically for taking images, moving them around with nice visual transitions and having something come together quickly. I've also used it to animate infographics in far less than half the time it would have taken me in Premiere. It definitely has serious limits in the type of animation you can do, which is important to be aware of, but if that works within the framework and scope of your budget, then it's incredible.
Remember - the only limits to how sophisticated you can make this look are how creative you are, to begin with. I did things with this program I don't think I'd seen in any of their samples, simply because I have a background in it all and had a new set of tools to play with.
Won over $300k+ in new biz by changing from an old PowerPoint deck to a short (4-5 min) video and reframing how we shared the information
Modified the same deck to be shown at annual conventions as a less "pitch" and more "informational" way of educating the audience, and never saw as many people visiting our booth for information. Likely could attribute additional new biz leads to this effort as well
Got to save a LOT of money in the time and production of the deck which was then able to be utilized instead on other things to make future decks better, like a new microphone and better monitors. Seriously I can't believe how inexpensive this program is
