The Pros and Cons of Biteable and Animoto

Biteable and Animoto are online video creation apps which are used to develop explainer videos, ads, animations, presentations, and other video products. There are both free and paid versions of the platforms.

Biteable Premium (without the watermark) is $US23 a month (billed annually) or $US43 a month (billed monthly). Animoto Professional (again without the watermark) is $US44 a month (billed annually) or $US79 a month (billed monthly) with Animoto Business $US59 a month (billed annually) or $US120 a month (billed monthly).

Both these platforms aim to make video widely available for use by businesses.

These online animation services can be ‘OK’ but you will be using animation elements from an existing database of presets. These services all have predefined characters and graphic elements and you can’t create your own graphics within the apps.

The design or template your company decides on for its brand is what company B down the road might also decide is the defining look for their brand.

Here are some of the pros and cons of these services.

Animoto: Pros

If you’re not looking for something too fancy Animoto is a very bare-bones video builder (and that’s not to say that that’s a bad thing). Its simplicity can be ideal for those who are time-poor but want to put out simple video content regularly. It’s more suited for creating basic slide-show style videos. These can be powerful in their own way, especially in telling a story that balances text and photos/footage effectively. And yes, you can now record voiceover (although the quality is nowhere near that of a professionally recorded option)

Animoto: Cons

There are limitations to making things look the way you want them though – for example, photos may need to be resized, cropped or shifted around in some other image editing program to get the look you require.

There is also a limit to text styles and sizes. Lack of features means presentations won’t have much depth. Animoto videos can start to look a little samey in our opinion so it’s hard to get a truly unique aesthetic/look.

Verdict: It’s great to have a template, but there are only a handful of choices with Animoto. IF you’re creating a lot of videos AND want the ability to change it up, this might not be the best for you.

 

Your best bet for Animoto is to draw on its strengths and recognise its limitations. For an art project or maybe a book report, it could be useful and engaging. Also, it’s a bit of a primer on video-editing software. Choices are limited, which does make the site easy to use. At $US708-$US1440 a year for the business account, you’d be best off employing a professional to create you a video that has quality, longevity and can be repurposed over many platforms.

Biteable Pros:

Biteable is a good option that you can use for editing scenes, adding in graphics and templates and producing reasonable quality videos. The overall library is good and there are different types of audio tracks and customisation options that can suit your needs. It is a fairly easy to use tool; In just a few minutes you can obtain decent results working on the basis of predesigned templates that you can add as scenes

Biteable Cons:

The problem with using the customisation options is that the footage can often be difficult to manipulate as you attempt to make additional changes. For each scene, you can edit the content, font and length. That’s it. The only real thing that you can do is add in scenes and text and the transitions will be prebuilt so that they cannot be changed or affected in any basic way.

The functionality is rather limited with a fixed number of templates. Yes, you can choose the colour scheme, but you cannot adjust the clip, their fonts or the size of the fonts. The time between scenes is adjusted automatically which disables users to plan the total time of duration (and timing is everything in video!).

So there are a few limitations, but the main one is that it doesn’t offer you the ability to record a voice over.

Verdict: It’s really just a great tool for quick and generic-looking marketing videos. It would be very hard to capture the unique essence of your brand. While the themes may be different, the style of the video is always the same. The price of Biteable is much cheaper, at $US276-$US516 a year, but if your goal is growing a professional and unique business, your money is best spent elsewhere.

Conclusion:

You may get the pre-packaged online service videos quickly but you might find yourself settling for something that wasn’t as great as you had initially intended. AND you might find the video template that is meant to represent your brand has also been used by several other ‘unique’ brands.

Your video needs to BE your company. Your level of professionalism, your unique service or product, your innovation and modern approach will be judged by your audience from this video. If it hasn’t been crafted to reflect these values then it won’t reflect well.

Online video services are not ‘bad’ if you are cash strapped, however if you want to build your brand (and maintain it) using explainer or promotional videos, you should definitely go for custom videos. These are created from scratch and are much more creative and engaging. They are tailored to your business objectives and communicate precisely who you are.

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

If you’re interested in exploring a custom made video, our combined video and marketing packages can give you optimal results for a manageable price. Contact Bijoux Visual today.

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