"Info Video" Editing - Known Pain Points

[Andreas Thiel]

Hi. Wrote about Clypcraft before - which will basically be an information video editor SaaS.

I am still trying to nail down the initial use cases to derive the required feature set for a MVP. Any input would be awesome.

The current plan is launching it mostly as a tool to create tutorials / animated info graphics, not a tool for editing raw footage.
Probably it will target casual users who want to create informative videos (maybe for Youtube, maybe Udemy), who think After Effects is too expensive / complicated or have never heard of it and who maybe bought Filmora Wondershare, but who are missing quite a few convenience features there.

Things I have in mind:

• Getting images or clips to move through the screen along a linear lane or a curved path
• Displaying text sentence after sentence (subtitle style) infront of a photo slideshow
• Placing widgets (tables, bullet point lists, headlines etc.) in the video (the way Powerpoint presentations are created) and changing the visual properties over time

Later I want to move into

• VR mockups
• Procedural content generation
• Mathematical visualisations with a data stage (some ETL capabilities)
• Integrations with other online services
• Advanced motion graphics
• Bringing interactive widgets to other services (messaging, message boards, blogging)
• Providing a widget marketplace
• Launching a tutorial video platform where people can share their video projects

Is there anything that comes to mind? Something that you wish you had in your arsenal?

 

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[Andy Black]

Hi. Wrote about Clypcraft before - which will basically be an information video editor SaaS.

I am still trying to nail down the initial use cases to derive the required feature set for a MVP. Any input would be awesome.

The current plan is launching it mostly as a tool to create tutorials / animated info graphics, not a tool for editing raw footage.
Probably it will target casual users who want to create informative videos (maybe for Youtube, maybe Udemy), who think After Effects is too expensive / complicated or have never heard of it and who maybe bought Filmora Wondershare, but who are missing quite a few convenience features there.

Things I have in mind:

• Getting images or clips to move through the screen along a linear lane or a curved path
• Displaying text sentence after sentence (subtitle style) infront of a photo slideshow
• Placing widgets (tables, bullet point lists, headlines etc.) in the video (the way Powerpoint presentations are created) and changing the visual properties over time

Later I want to move into

• VR mockups
• Procedural content generation
• Mathematical visualisations with a data stage (some ETL capabilities)
• Integrations with other online services
• Advanced motion graphics
• Bringing interactive widgets to other services (messaging, message boards, blogging)
• Providing a widget marketplace
• Launching a tutorial video platform where people can share their video projects

Is there anything that comes to mind? Something that you wish you had in your arsenal?

I pay monthly for Loom, Zoom, Calendly, Canva, Google Drive, Descript, SpyFu, ClickCease, LeadForms, Freshbooks, Basecamp, and a load of other tools I can't remember off the top of my head.

I also pay annually for Camtasia, Dropbox, and New Zenler.

I've also bought Doodly, VideoScribe, and various other video creation apps.

And I'm just a team of two freelancers.

I love little tools at the $10-20 mark that do one thing and do it well. I pop in to do X with it then pop out again. I don't even consider it an ROI argument when paying $10/mth for Canva.

It seems you're more focused on doing lots of things rather than one thing so well people insta-add it to their armory.

What does your tool need to do for people to insta signup in their droves?

Who would insta signup, and why?

Who would share your product with their friends, peers, and clients?


You asked about use cases for simple animations (I think).

The world seems to be going crazy for short vertical video, with captions. Even look at the recent marketplace ads in the forum and you can see two services to help business owners try to capitalise on the reach of vertical short video on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and even LinkedIn.

What do people struggle with trying to DIY it, that your tool could help?

Tagging @BigRomeDawg and @mikecarlooch who have those marketplace ads in case they have some input here.

 

[Andy Black]

Oh, and something that bugs me about Canva is when I select a template such as a YouTube Banner and the template doesn't show what would be viewable on a mobile, desktop, or TV screen. I have to figure that out with trial and error. If I recall, Snappa was better with its templates.

 

[BigRomeDawg]

I like the idea. Creating good-looking infographic animations is expensive. @Andy Black mentioned Doodly and Videoscribe, which are good, but that style doesn't suit everything.

Make sure you're nailing down the needs of your market and don't get attached to the idea in its current form, get attached to your market and solving their problems. I've seen a few SaaS get really deep in development without ever truly confirming a market need.

Brainstorm questions:

• Who is your target market?
• How much money do they make?
• Are they already creating videos?
• Do they make money from their videos?
• What are their major pain points in making videos?
• Should you target end-users or agencies (me)?

 

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[Andreas Thiel]

Thank you both .

I pay monthly for Loom, Zoom, Calendly, Canva, Google Drive, Descript, SpyFu, ClickCease, LeadForms, Freshbooks, Basecamp, and a load of other tools I can't remember off the top of my head.

I also pay annually for Camtasia, Dropbox, and New Zenler.

I've also bought Doodly, VideoScribe, and various other video creation apps.

And I'm just a team of two freelancers.

This is helpful. I got some feedback and talked to a few people.
The feedback I got regarding the pricing was that $10 as the lowest tier is a bit much ... can't I make the numbers work for a very basic feature set for around $5?
I personally also need to penny pinch right now. At some point I will need to subscribe to Office 365 for example, but I am stalling as long as I reasonably can. While I can't provide advanced support as long as this is a side gig, I might tweak my target customer profile towards people who are successful in some field who want to casually get into video creation.
Then such budget concerns might be less of an issue.

I love little tools at the $10-20 mark that do one thing and do it well. I pop in to do X with it then pop out again. I don't even consider it an ROI argument when paying $10/mth for Canva.

Nice. Canva came up several times as well. I suppose along with Lumen5 it must be close to an ideal solution for the "turning the static content out there into videos" idea.

It seems you're more focused on doing lots of things rather than one thing so well people insta-add it to their armory.

In my probably too optimistic roadmap I would have a somewhat generic editor in the MVP ... a "WIX for videos".

So far I thought about doing one thing well in limited features for people who just sign up and don't order basic access for $5 (as an alternative to full trial access which I probably won't be able to provide).
They would be able to start highly specialized Jobs which would be executed on servers that all non-paying users share.

Maybe I should pivot. Starting with specialized jobs and later launching a generic editor would remove quite a few worries like if I can come up with a resilient concept for a widget video editor and implement it until the end of the year.

What does your tool need to do for people to insta signup in their droves?

I suppose one of the next steps could be listing assumptions to test and then implementing what is needed to test them.
The features I want for myself:

• The big one: speed up the creation of "The SolidIndie Tour" and "The SolidIndie Workshop" video course with great production value
• I want to be able to upload 5 - 15 min videos, define clips in these videos (mark start and end) and label them .. and later combine clips from several videos into a new video and maybe optionally just extract audio at these points
• Turn image collections into slideshow videos (ideally with fancy effects at some point) ... again, using labels to allow for queries based on them in the video editor
• I was hoping I could create transparent videos that I can use in Filmora Wondershare for overlays, but Filmora does not support transparent videos. Image sequences seem to be viable and I would probably use that
• I registered the domain playtexts.com at some point ... not sure if I still own it. I still kinda want to be able to make texts playable with speed reading theory applied - like showing one sentence at a time and highlighting a part in bold that I can visually digest at once ... to practise speed reading by having to keep up
• Turn logfiles (server or app logfiles) into videos
• Digestaur idea: use it for language learning by using text-to-speech and translation services to turn random articles into videos that take the article apart

But well, I realized what I want is usually far removed from what most people are looking for, so I hesitate to go all in on these. Specializing on the creation of video courses is something that my guts approve.

Who would insta signup, and why?

Who would share your product with their friends, peers, and clients?

That is a concern.
Most people who would sign up to create online video courses are probably mostly lone wolfs ... or at least they work on the side project in secret. Probably a slideshow creation tool has better odds of spreading in a viral way.

You asked about use cases for simple animations (I think).

The world seems to be going crazy for short vertical video, with captions. Even look at the recent marketplace ads in the forum and you can see two services to help business owners try to capitalise on the reach of vertical short video on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and even LinkedIn.

Very good point ... it was in my face and I could not see it.
I drifted into TikTok ... not sure how, my sister has a horrible addiction.

What do people struggle with trying to DIY it, that your tool could help?

Need to think about that. Often the raw footage is 90% the battle and then it is awesome when it loops well.
Maybe it is tricky to add value there

Oh, and something that bugs me about Canva is when I select a template such as a YouTube Banner and the template doesn't show what would be viewable on a mobile, desktop, or TV screen. I have to figure that out with trial and error. If I recall, Snappa was better with its templates.

Might become important when widgets can be shared interactively and through other services.
Initially there shouldn't be any responsive design issues, unless a video project can be rendered to several resolutions and aspect ratios ... and there is just one preview.

Tagging ...

Thanks again

I like the idea. Creating good-looking infographic animations is expensive. @Andy Black mentioned Doodly and Videoscribe, which are good, but that style doesn't suit everything.

The initial idea was bringing HTML capabilities to video. The things you have in mind probably require vector graphics and maybe even WebGL capabilities ... which is fine.
Maybe I should put my focus there. I started a "swipes" folder a while ago but have not added much because it often feels like stolen time "browing the web aimlessly instead of programming features".
When I look at well designed info graphics I often wonder what could be done by adding simple or advanced animations ... that currently requires After Effects capabilities and I could probably empower people with simpler tools.

Make sure you're nailing down the needs of your market and don't get attached to the idea in its current form, get attached to your market and solving their problems. I've seen a few SaaS get really deep in development without ever truly confirming a market need.

Brainstorm questions:

• Who is your target market?
• How much money do they make?
• Are they already creating videos?
• Do they make money from their videos?
• What are their major pain points in making videos?
• Should you target end-users or agencies (me)?

I am bootstrapping this and hope that the foundation is stable enough that I can pivot quite a few times.
But yes, I need assumptions to test ... yesterday .

I will go for those who would not consider Adobe After Effects because it is complicated and possibly too expensive ... and who have interesting things to say. I don't think I can target agencies initially. If I could target businesses I'd probably create a logfile-to-video service first, but businesses want support and SLAs. At first I need casual customers who mostly want to be left alone and use intuitive software to do something cool.

 

[Andy Black]

Thank you both .


This is helpful. I got some feedback and talked to a few people.
The feedback I got regarding the pricing was that $10 as the lowest tier is a bit much ... can't I make the numbers work for a very basic feature set for around $5?
I personally also need to penny pinch right now. At some point I will need to subscribe to Office 365 for example, but I am stalling as long as I reasonably can. While I can't provide advanced support as long as this is a side gig, I might tweak my target customer profile towards people who are successful in some field who want to casually get into video creation.
Then such budget concerns might be less of an issue.


Nice. Canva came up several times as well. I suppose along with Lumen5 it must be close to an ideal solution for the "turning the static content out there into videos" idea.


In my probably too optimistic roadmap I would have a somewhat generic editor in the MVP ... a "WIX for videos".

So far I thought about doing one thing well in limited features for people who just sign up and don't order basic access for $5 (as an alternative to full trial access which I probably won't be able to provide).
They would be able to start highly specialized Jobs which would be executed on servers that all non-paying users share.

Maybe I should pivot. Starting with specialized jobs and later launching a generic editor would remove quite a few worries like if I can come up with a resilient concept for a widget video editor and implement it until the end of the year.


I suppose one of the next steps could be listing assumptions to test and then implementing what is needed to test them.
The features I want for myself:

• The big one: speed up the creation of "The SolidIndie Tour" and "The SolidIndie Workshop" video course with great production value
• I want to be able to upload 5 - 15 min videos, define clips in these videos (mark start and end) and label them .. and later combine clips from several videos into a new video and maybe optionally just extract audio at these points
• Turn image collections into slideshow videos (ideally with fancy effects at some point) ... again, using labels to allow for queries based on them in the video editor
• I was hoping I could create transparent videos that I can use in Filmora Wondershare for overlays, but Filmora does not support transparent videos. Image sequences seem to be viable and I would probably use that
• I registered the domain playtexts.com at some point ... not sure if I still own it. I still kinda want to be able to make texts playable with speed reading theory applied - like showing one sentence at a time and highlighting a part in bold that I can visually digest at once ... to practise speed reading by having to keep up
• Turn logfiles (server or app logfiles) into videos
• Digestaur idea: use it for language learning by using text-to-speech and translation services to turn random articles into videos that take the article apart

But well, I realized what I want is usually far removed from what most people are looking for, so I hesitate to go all in on these. Specializing on the creation of video courses is something that my guts approve.


That is a concern.
Most people who would sign up to create online video courses are probably mostly lone wolfs ... or at least they work on the side project in secret. Probably a slideshow creation tool has better odds of spreading in a viral way.


Very good point ... it was in my face and I could not see it.
I drifted into TikTok ... not sure how, my sister has a horrible addiction.


Need to think about that. Often the raw footage is 90% the battle and then it is awesome when it loops well.
Maybe it is tricky to add value there


Might become important when widgets can be shared interactively and through other services.
Initially there shouldn't be any responsive design issues, unless a video project can be rendered to several resolutions and aspect ratios ... and there is just one preview.


Thanks again


The initial idea was bringing HTML capabilities to video. The things you have in mind probably require vector graphics and maybe even WebGL capabilities ... which is fine.
Maybe I should put my focus there. I started a "swipes" folder a while ago but have not added much because it often feels like stolen time "browing the web aimlessly instead of programming features".
When I look at well designed info graphics I often wonder what could be done by adding simple or advanced animations ... that currently requires After Effects capabilities and I could probably empower people with simpler tools.


I am bootstrapping this and hope that the foundation is stable enough that I can pivot quite a few times.
But yes, I need assumptions to test ... yesterday .

I will go for those who would not consider Adobe After Effects because it is complicated and possibly too expensive ... and who have interesting things to say. I don't think I can target agencies initially. If I could target businesses I'd probably create a logfile-to-video service first, but businesses want support and SLAs. At first I need casual customers who mostly want to be left alone and use intuitive software to do something cool.

Use me as an example avatar.

Describe WHO I am and WHAT I'm trying to do.

Describe WHY I'm trying to do it.

Explain why I insta signup to lots of $10/mth products that do just one thing, simply.

Explain why I'm using Camtasia and Descript and no Adobe products.

Consider if there's many people like me out there, and how you'd get in front of us.

 

[Andreas Thiel]

Use me as an example avatar.

Describe WHO I am and WHAT I'm trying to do.

Not sure. I suppose you are a professional who wants to move through the value chain more efficiently. You want to transform raw footage, thoughts and ideas into something engaging and presentable, without spending a lot of time wrapping your head around the specifics of a powerful tool with too many features. You are intimately familiar with a problem domain and don't want to spend time wrapping your head around the solution domain and figuring out how the domains relate to each other.

Describe WHY I'm trying to do it.

Tough one. You have been inspired before and have an end result in mind? You have an audience that expects new content quickly or you are trying to engage with a new one. Maybe you want to communicate an idea more clearly? You realize there is a lot of true value in your content but are not happy with the perceived value? Or the customer has specific expectations and you simply have to create what they asked for ... somehow?

Explain why I insta signup to lots of $10/mth products that do just one thing, simply.

You have momentum already. You are doing okay and are looking for ways to optimize workflows. You know from experience that what the tool offers is something that will come in handy repeatedly or adds enough value that using it once per year justifies the costs?

Explain why I'm using Camtasia and Descript and no Adobe products.

No idea. Is this about doing one thing well again so that you can keep your workflows simple? I suppose more generic editors usually require an understanding of the solution domain (their technical specifics) and coming up with creative ways to produce the outcome you want.
Could be that you are unhappy with the Adobe business practices. *Shrug*

Consider if there's many people like me out there, and how you'd get in front of us.

That is probably where I need to do my homework, correct. I was hoping that Twitter and Youtube would provide ways to get infront of the target customer. Created this initial business model canvas a while ago:



Then the idea was creating clips, uploading them to Youtube and having a Twitter account that embeds the results with reasonable keywords. Reddit would be tricky. People should wonder: how can I create something like that and discover that Clypcraft provides the capabilities they are looking for.
Right now there is a significant disconnect ... don't know what I can offer initially that people are searching for and that they want to produce themselves.

Feels like I am stuck in unhealthy ways of thinking about things when it comes to reaching the audience.
I'll look at the content of the "Zero To Launch" for Information Products again. Maybe that will help.

Am I missing anything? It feels like you have something in mind that I should be able to figure out. Or are these just open ended questions?

 

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