How To Make A Template On Motion Den

Review: Motion Den - DIY Video Intros and Slideshows

Motion Den claims to be the world's simplest video maker of intros and slideshow style animated videos. I needed an animated slide show to promote my etourist Skateboards online store, which I planned to make myself with one of the many video editing applications I have, just, after being directed to Movement Den by a spammy, completely unrelated comment on this very weblog (which I've since deleted), I idea I'll give them a attempt.

The site is free to sign up and make videos with. Any published videos will have the Motility Den watermark. If you wish to remove this you can purchase private videos or sign up for one of their plans, which requite you a certain amount of credits each month to buy videos with. Notation that you can't actually do anything with a published free video other than view information technology in your account. At that place are no share options and you lot can't download it (making the watermark almost pointless).

A selection of Motility Den'due south Templates.

Move Den is a template based organisation, meaning you choose a template, substitute your own photos and text, and you lot're good to get, instant, professional person looking animated video. Nothing wrong with that at all. Information technology'south a proficient, fourth dimension saving choice if y'all can find a template that suits your needs.

At the time I signed up there were just five slideshow templates, most with music attached to creative commons licenses. Not a big consequence but might be if yous intend using the site for commercial projects. Quite past chance, the template I liked featured music that was licensed for commercial employ.

Using Motion Den's video pattern is a breeze. Each editable component is clearly labeled. Merely click on the element to add text or to select and/or upload a photo. Photos can be cropped to fit the template - so you don't need to do this earlier hand.

Motion Den's Studio. Expect to run across the
'Saving Image' dialogue a lot!

One thing Motility Den isn't, is quick. At least not if you're uploading photos at the standard resolution of your typical phone camera. The actual upload seems fairly quick but, once you select the image for your project it takes much longer for the image to be saved into information technology (in almost cases on my projection, noticeably longer than the actual uploads - I wrote nigh of this review during the many wait times!).

The site also claims to save you more than time for doing the things you love but it took me the best part of iii hours to edit 23 scenes in my template. That seemed overly long compared to other solutions I've come across.

In that location likewise doesn't seem to be any way to preview your video properly to see how information technology's going. Then, once you hit 'Make Video', you're warned that you won't be able to make changes to the project anymore.

Personally I think the whole thing could exist improved if you lot could bulk upload all your photos in the order y'all want them to appear, then just run through the template and crop, position or swap photos around. I found it frustrating constantly waiting on images to be saved into the project. (If I wasn't writing this review I would probably have given information technology away).

Below is the only video I've successfully processed and published to date (more than on that in the footnote below). Information technology'due south not the video I describe editing higher up, it's a ane prototype, 1 text box (that had a character limit too pocket-size for my etouristskateboards.com URL) logo splash.

For me the process was certainly uncomplicated and easy - especially for the above video which took seconds to create but hours to procedure. On my initial 23 image video it was simply way too slow with lots of waiting around. The amount of fourth dimension I spent putting that together I feel wasn't that much less than how long it may have taken using a standard video editing application.

If you don't know how to edit photos into a slideshow, or don't have a quicker slideshow application bachelor and so Motion Den may be worth a look (though read my footnote beginning).

At the moment the site appears to be relatively new with many more than templates for intros and openers than slideshows - so if you lot're in need of a professional person looking opener for your videos this could well be worth a look.

I'm non altogether sure if signing up for a plan at annihilation other than the lowest level is worth information technology as it's unclear as to what extras yous get at each level. However given y'all can use the site for complimentary yous tin can certainly spend as much time as you lot need evaluating how useful Motion Den volition exist for you.

Footnote:

The video that I started out creating for this review ultimately failed to process. Information technology was stuck at 5% processed for days. I tried creating several other videos just to see if it was an issue with my specific video merely all got stuck at 5% processing for days. I contacted Motility Den'due south support team but have still to hear anything.

A couple of weeks afterward I signed into my account and was met with this...

Aye... that doesn't look good.

All my videos were marked equally 'Errored' and no longer accessible. Further investigation revealed that all merely one of the site's templates had been taken down. The remaining template I managed to customize and successfully procedure equally the example video I posted in a higher place.

If you're reading this, long subsequently I wrote it, and the site appears to be well populated with templates and working again, then my review, I believe, is a fair assessment of the process upwards until my videos got stuck in processing hell.

I contemplated non posting this review but I'd already invested quite a scrap of time and whoever brought the site to my attending with their spammy, generic web log comment deserves the karma of a less than stellar review.

Subsequently my initial video failed to process I notwithstanding needed to create my animated slide show for my skateboard shop. A Google search brought my attention to a similar site chosen Return Forest.

Render Woods is but like what Motion Den should have been only amend in every fashion. I was able to brand a quick, seven second video advertizing that looked very cool in under an hr, including processing time and purchasing a loftier quality download. I posted that video to my Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts and have embeded information technology beneath.

Render Forest'due south Robot character
is a practiced representation of how
happy you'll exist with their service.

I program to write a more complete review of Render Forest at some point merely, if you're looking for a site that will assistance yous make intros, slideshows, music visualizations, and more using templates as a base so Return Forest is definitely a great option, and certainly better than Movie Den. You can even download your free published videos.