VideoScribe HD – iPad App of the Week

VideoScribe HD – iPad App of the Week 

VideoScribe HD - iPad App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at various Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive.

VideoScribe HD

This week’s App is VideoScribe HD.

Update: Sparkol have replaced this app with VideoScribe Anywhere.

Sparkol VideoScribe is a completely unique way to create engaging animated videos quickly and easily. Often called Whiteboard animation or sometimes Fast Drawing, VideoScribe replicates the stop-motion capture style of drawing that’s so popular on commercials at a fraction of the cost. We empower you to create really powerful videos without any design or technical knowledge through a simple, logical application that delivers the power of a multi-thousand pound production.

Whether introducing people to your business, telling a story, explaining a process, illustrating a talk or just simply being creative – you’ll find Video Scribe hard to put down and a powerful way to communicate.

Place text and drawings (either from the huge library of hundreds of images, from the web or your own in third party tools like neu.Draw) and bring them straight in to VideoScribe onto a canvas, set timings and add a soundtrack; then sit back and watch your creation unfold as the hand magically draws your creation.

Video Scribing is an increasingly popular form of animation, however, getting a bespoke video created to tell your story, sell your products or entertain your audience is an expensive and complicated process with time consuming stop-motion video capture. VideoScribe HD uniquely automates this complex process into a very simple, easy to use product that delivers professional results. It will become addictive.

There are endless possibilities with this unique app – whether you see this as a serious business tool or a fun way to communicate a message – you’ll be able to easily create unlimited projects of ideas, stories, thoughts and much more. The interface has been skilfully kept simple, yet there are a huge amount of features needed to create your own animated “video scribed” video.

£2.99

One of my favourite videos recently has to be this one from RSAnimate featuring Sir Ken Robinson.

I know I don’t have the artistic skills to create anything like this, but with VideoScribe I could create something in a similar style.

I have been totally impressed with this app in how it can be used to create animations complete with text and voiceovers. It would work well as a presentation tool or for creating videos for “flipped” learning.

The process is quite simple, you start with a blank canvas, to which you add animated text and animated pictures that drawn as part of the presentation.

VideoScribe HD

There is included a large collection of animated drawings across a range of subjects.

VideoScribe HD

If you want to use your own drawings (or even photographs) you can and the app will convert and animate these into drawing animations.

VideoScribe HD

Adding text is easy, select the text button, type in your text and you’re done.

VideoScribe HD

 

Once the text is in place, you can  adjust the size using the corners, or rotate it.

 

VideoScribe HD

You can adjust the font of the text you add. I did find it a little challenging to edit the text, probably not doing it right.

VideoScribe HD

For the animations you can adjust the timing, to speed them up or slow them down. You can change from “drawing” a picture or text to having it moved in by a “hand” or morphing.

VideoScribe HD

You can also add a voiceover recording. This is to be recommended to make your final animation more effective. I did think that this could be much easier to do.

Though for me it was a very stable app, I did find that not everything worked as I thought it should.

Once finished you can export the movie to your camera roll or share various social networks.

In order to really use this tool effectively you really do need to plan out what is going to go into your animation. Mainly as it will make it much easier to create the final animation, but also to ensure you don’t miss anything out, as though certainly possible to edit and tweak an animation, it might be challenging if you have a very complicated story to tell.

Another idea is to create a series of short linked animations, rather than try and create one big long one. This would be much easier to manage and certainly easier to create. Once the animations are done, they could be exported to the iPad camera roll and then imported into an app such as iMovie.

Let’s be straight about this, this app isn’t going to create something along the lines of the quality of the RSAnimate videos, for that you are going to need to hire an artist and camera crew. What VideoScribe does do is make it very easy for learners and staff to create clever animations that look really good.

Get VideoScribe HD in the iTunes App Store.

Update: Sparkol have replaced this app with VideoScribe Anywhere.

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