
How to DIY a Product Launch Video with No Experience, and for Free - gx
https://clearfounder.com/how-to-diy-a-product-launch-video-with-no-experience-and-for-free/
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superasn
I think the way to do anything well is to reverse engineer what other people
are doing well, find a pattern, break it into small bite size steps and then
do it or get help with the step you can't do it on your own.

Always beats imagination or reinventing the wheel.

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sdca
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU)

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elcomet
Do you really need a video ? I think a clean and clear website is much better,
and much faster to process by the potential consumer (it might depend on the
target audience though).

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aminmemon
This. Great copy and clean UI for the website does a real good job of
explaining the product. I personally, dislike watching videos to understand
the product, until unless maybe if it is a physical product.

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baragiola
It is said that if people can't understand your product right away, you're
doing it wrong. But Slack is very successful and yet people just understand
what it is after watching a video of it

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alexcnwy
Very cool and I think the product and landing page are gorgeous!

One bit of feedback on the vid is I think it could be better timed to the
music - the text zooms should be on the beat breaks.

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Tepix
This! It's more work during editing but worth it. You've got a good uplifting
soundtrack, to transfer the vibe to your video you need to match its beat. Add
zoom as mentioned elsewhere and you've got yourself a professional video!

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qrybam
Great effort.

> The bad news is, I don't know of the equivalents of these for Windows, so
> all I can simply say for this article is you'll need a macOS device to
> follow along.

Does anyone have suggestions for Windows-supporting alternatives?

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robertAngst
Really suprises me that a company would go out of their way to make software
for Apple products exclusively.

No B2B, customers are likely pre-college grads, and the pool of customers are
tiny.

Anyone like to hypothesize why a company would be exclusive to Apple?

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albertgoeswoof
For media production apple is the market leader and the biggest market by a
long way

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robertAngst
Source? Is this true? I've seen apple users say this, but none of them are out
of college, or they are STAHMs.

Does enterprise use this? Any big companies?

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7Z7
I'm in VFX, in one of the leading houses (5000+ employees over 5 sites). We
use Linux for 90% of our workload, but the rest is probably evenly split
between Windows for the occasional tools that don't have a Linux release, or
Macs.

Interestingly, its mostly the admin/production/HR team who are on the Macs.
Additionally all company laptops are MacBooks.

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marvindanig
Nice. I did a classical animation demo [0] for a product that we worked on a
few years ago and was surprised by how much we could achieve by simply
following general advice. Although I wouldn't recommend anyone going down the
path of classical animation for their product demos, the excursion surely made
an impact on me.

[0] [https://bubblin.io/cover/demo-in-sixty-seconds-by-marvin-
dan...](https://bubblin.io/cover/demo-in-sixty-seconds-by-marvin-danig)

Edit: Added a link.

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wonderofworld
Videos are super helpful when trying to convey the real value of a product to
users. So many people skim sites however when it comes to video they become
completely immersed.

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maxxxxx
For me it's the opposite. If a video doesn't get to the point within a few
seconds I skip it. However, I read specs.

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stevoski
Great effort!

Assuming the video creator is here, here's a quick tip to make the video even
better: zoom in and crop.

Currently you seem to be showing the entire app window. Try only showing the
feature you are highlighting. This makes the video better for small devices
and on computer screens when the viewer hasn't gone full-screen.

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zupa-hu
Except the viewer is loosing context. I'd go the opposite direction and show
the entire screen. (Of course shrink your screen size to be just right.) If
you want, maybe zoom in later once you have given context. I don't know
otherwise if this runs in the browser or if it is a standalone app.

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7Z7
I'm pretty sure you are both talking about the same thing. The used phrase
"zoom in and crop" implies starting with context, zooming in, and showing the
close-up feature. Otherwise s/he could have just said "crop".

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0898
The app seems to be a cross between MindNode and iA Writer. Which to me, as an
active user of both those apps, seems like a great idea.

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koheripbal
$40 seems excessive for what is essentially a hierarchical TODO list.

I simply open a google doc in B4 page format landscape and keep a list with
bullets/sub-bullets.

It's not ideal, but I haven't found a mind-mapping tool that materially
provides anything better.

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tyiz
Thanks for the tutorial. If you don’t zoom into where the magic happens, users
don’t have context and don’t understand. Also didn’t like the hard cuts.
Camtasia is a tool with fantastic zoom and transition effects. Not free but
well worth it.

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zupa-hu
+1. Camtasia Studio has been some of my best dollars spent. Also it's noise
removal and volume adjustment features are INCREDIBLE. I mean, just push a
button, done, and it's, WOW.

I also bought a great mic (AT2020USB+) so that viewers were actually able to
hear what I say. I went as far as recording the audio separately to avoid my
notebook fan noise, keyboard clicks, etc. But I later figured that the high
quality mic + Camtasia's noise removal are so great that I can save the (huge
amount of) time and use the audio that I record on the go. (I was mainly
recording 1-2 minute how-to videos.) Now recording a 1 minute video takes me
~an hour instead of a day that it took at the start.

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notoriousjpg
Question non snarky question: Why do some people opt to host their videos in
vimeo instead of youtube? Are there benefits or is it the cool contrarian
thing to do atm?

Great article. I hope to use it to do something similar soon :)

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commoner
Vimeo publishers with paid subscriptions have a greater degree of control over
the appearance of the video player. In particular, they can remove the Vimeo
branding or replace it with their own branding. On the other hand, YouTube
always displays its own logo on its video player.

[https://vimeo.com/blog/post/customize-the-embedded-vimeo-
pla...](https://vimeo.com/blog/post/customize-the-embedded-vimeo-player)

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ckdarby
Could not handle the music and closed 10 seconds into the video.

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vaultcool
For anyone not wanting to follow the link trail, here's the website:
[https://writemapper.com](https://writemapper.com)

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no1youknowz
This is great. I'm going to start a YouTube channel in the next week or so and
stuff like this is very helpful!

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mimixco
This is great and your product looks interesting, too! Thanks for the post.

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andyidsinga
I really like this post.

I've been doing this for a few months myself : < 1.5 min videos for products
I'm working on then I share the video around - and after a few iterations can
post it to a website.

I've been doing a "story style" voice narration over my videos "Meet _________
she's a ________ that needs to accomplish _________. Product _______ helps her
do that ....."

that said - I like the OP's non narration style too : Headline -> product
screen -> headline ..."

Here is a summary of the tools and process I use on windows 10:

1) write down the narrated story in a google doc - with individual, numbered
"scenes" ..these will be only 1-3 sentences each.

2) practice narrating into Audacity (an audio tool). A decent mic is a good
idea - I use a Samson Q2U.

3) iterate on #1 & #2 over and over until you get the text and time to be <
1.5 mins. This is harder than it seems and listening to one's own voice is
grating ;)

4) export to mp3 and share with some friends/family to make sure the audio and
intonation sounds good. (hint: before exporting, use Audacity's "Normalize"
effect .this will attempt to bring the audio to a 0db level which is helpful
in the video editing phase when mixing with background music and the audio
ducking features).

4.5) once you have the audio narration wrapped up, export audio into
individual audio clips for each scene in the written story. This helps if you
want to move things around at video editing time.

5) product mockups are done in draw.io , then I just grab the a screen shot of
the product mockup screens to be included in the video.

6) screen recordings with a real product / desktop etc are grabbed using OBS
(open broadcaster software). This is a GREAT package and works great with
single or multi-monitor setup as well as multiple webcam sources all at once
if you need them (ex. to show mobile / hardware / physical product along side
the desktop software).

7) I bring in other scene images purchased from Shutterstock. This is KEY if
you want to have the same actor in different scenes throughout the video; and
its hard to get this from the free image sites like pixabay. If there is one
thing to spend money on in this whole process - its shutterstock - I can't
emphasize this enough. Seriously - the images are great and seem to almost be
ready made for this kind of activity.

8) Background music - just like the OP - youtube audio library is awesome :
[https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music](https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music)

9) Video editing (remember we're talking windows 10 here) - I use Pinnacle
studio 22 - its decent once you get through all the very frustrating UI bugs
and bugs in encoded output. I like it for the pan & zoom effects (think Ken
Burns effect) and audio ducking. If you don't buy a package, try starting with
the free Davinci Resolve - its pretty good and what I would use if starting
over. (in fact the only reason I purchased Pinnacle was becuase I forgot about
Davinci Resolve)

9.5) putting it all together in video is a matter of dropping in all the
images from shutterstock, screen shots of draw.io mockups, obs video captures,
background music and narrated audio clips - and then spending HOURS (I'm still
a novice) getting the transitions and audio lined up just right.

9.6) use "audio ducking" to cause the background music to go down in level
when the voice narration is present and go up in level during transitions or
non-narrated demo sections.

hope this helps...

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ngcc_hk
Any pc equivalent? Would be helpful.

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andyidsinga
I added a comment to this thread about windows 10 tools and my process. hope
that is helpful...

