Google is helping businesses create short, promotional videos for YouTube with the launch of a free beta tool. YouTube Video Builder is designed to make video creation quick and easy with no need for any previous editing experience or any video content, as it’s designed to create a video from your choice of still images.
“Because businesses of all sizes are strapped for time and resources and in-person video shoots are no longer practical in many countries, we are accelerating the next stage of Video Builder availability.”
Video Builder allows businesses to create 6 second or 15 second videos using a variety of layouts, in a similar way to the templates provided by ESP’s, where easily creating an email design is the objective.
The tool is designed to animate static assets, so no actual video footage is required. Businesses upload their own images, text, and logos which are then generated into a short video.
During the video creation process you can customize colors and fonts, and even add music from Google’s royalty-free library.
When a video is created and uploaded it can be used however you wish, including within a video email campaign using Playable.
The video builder makes it super easy to create a video clip perfect for video email, as it enables you to use images you have to hand, apply your brand colours and fonts and then add text overlays, which are perfect for calling out promotional offers and call to actions.
Here’s an example of what a video created by Video Builder looks like:
Designed to create short video clips.
Google clarifies that this tool is designed for “supplemental” and “lightweight” videos only.
Video Builder is not capable of creating or editing videos of any significant length, with 15 seconds being the maximum duration.
For longer video creations, you’ll have to turn to YouTube’s creator studio or use your own software.
Google makes it pretty clear that they are seeking to help smaller businesses embrace the opportunity which video offers, by making it super easy and not dependent on having any current video footage.
“For smaller businesses and those with less creative experience, it can provide an efficient, low-resource way to create videos, perhaps even for the first time.”
You can sign up for a beta version of Video Builder – sign up for access here. Google says requests will be processed as soon as possible based on tool capacity, our request took just a couple of days to come through..
Once you sign up for the beta and get an email granting you access to the tool, here’s how to get started.
In a launch video, YouTube recommends creating a video by following the steps below:
- Select the layout that works best for your goal
- Add your brand’s color and logo
- Upload images and add text
- Choose a preferred font
- Pick a music track to set the tone of the video
- Click “create video” and preview the finished product
- If satisfied, save and upload it to your channel
As shown in the video below – the interface appears is intuitive and user-friendly, requiring no previous video editing experience.
The video you create will be saved as a template that you can revisit.
So if you want to create similar videos with only minor differences between them, you can do that with Video Builder.
As an optional step, you can immediately create a YouTube or Google Ads campaign featuring the video you just generated.
But that’s not necessary. You can still use the tool and upload videos for free without paying for advertising.
To use your video created in Video Builder within a video email simply publish your video to your YouTube channel and then copy and paste the URL of the video into Playable to upload it as your content for your video email.
This initiative from YouTube follows the launch of Vimeos video creation tool, Vimeo Create, earlier in the year.