CreateStudio Review: Advantages & Limitations of this Video Creator

In this CreateStudio Review let’s look at some of the advantages and limitations of this wonderful video creator.

CreateStudio Advantages

1. One of the best video creator software available in the market for text animations. There are various combinations of text animations that can be done per line, per word or even per letter.
2. Motion Easing Options that you can do only with a graph editor can be done in CreateStudio. And it’s very easy to apply animation easing through the various presets readily available.
3. You can do whiteboard-style videos where a hand appears to write/draw the various objects on the scene, quite easily. There are many settings to control the speed and style of whiteboard animation. These three options easily justify the cost of the basic standard CreateStudio version.
4. Manual doodle video creator function allows you to reveal the portions of the video selectively, and in the order you wish. Automatic doole reveal effect with various hands and pens are also available. There is even an eraser function in the doodle effects.
5. To reveal text, you can use typewriter, number counter and random characters effects instantly.
6. The output video file size is amazingly low, even for Full HD MP4 Videos. Looks like compression is built right into the tool.
7. Both 2D & 3D characters and their actions are good looking and well animated.
8. There are some good animated 2D and 3D props and motion graphics we can use in our videos – whoever did those animated smileys deserve an oscar 🙂
9. There are many vectors and shapes built right into the tool. That’s very useful for anyone making motion graphics or explainer-style videos.
10. There is a camera tool that enables us to do whiteboard animations that continue from scene to scene, or kinetic animation style videos – for example.
11. We can import SVG images with individual layers. We can also import videos with transparency.
12. We can bring in green screen footage and remove the green screen from within CreateStudio.
13. We can output video in many formats including .mp4, .mov, .webm. We can even export transparent videos using the last two formats!
14. There is an active Facebook Group for CreateStudio buyers and even the company representatives are in there. Since they keep listening to users closely, many feature requests get implemented quickly.
15. There are many readymade motion animation presets available to be applied to any layer instantly. For example, if you want an object to slide in from the left and slide out from the right of the screen (after a short duration), you can do that with a single click.
16. You can do many custom animations (for any duration) by animating the position, scale, rotation, and even the color and borders!
17. It’s possible to directly import Lottie files and use them in our animations. Lottie files are ready made assets and animations, and some interesting ones are free to use.
18. Readymade Scroll stoppers and animated props for doodle videos are available to use, a few even for the basic version users.
19. The team releases many seasonal characters and props, esp. in 3D. For example, a month before Christmas. But you need to be a premium on-going customer to access these.
20. Spotlight function can be used to highlight important sections of the video using a 2D light in which intensity, etc. can be adjusted.
21. Masking functionality is supported by CS.
22. Presets allow you to save a specific part of the assets and animation, and reuse it in other projects.
23. You can export any project to the computer and reimport it anytime later. You can also store it in their cloud, if you wish.
24. Common Blending Modes are supported in Layers that enable you to show your photos and videos with various styles and effects.

CreateStudio Limitations

1. You can group various layers, but it’s currently not possible to add animations to this group. This is the biggest limitation of this video creator tool for motion graphics. You could still add custom animations to each layer separately, but it can become tedious for larger projects.
2. CreateStudio needs to be always connected to the Internet to work, despite the software being desktop-based. Why?
3. This export function in this tool is quite slow, especially if you want to render any video over a couple of minutes. It’s better to render smaller videos and combine them using another video editor like Hitfilm Express.
4. There are limited character actions and these vary character-wise. Also, you cannot change the attire or any other property of the characters.
5. There is no way to specify the start and stop points for output video rendering. It starts from the beginning and ends whereever the final animation stops.
6. We cannot export images from a particular frame in the video.
7. Frame by frame movement of the playhead is not supported.
8. It’s not possible to apply motion easing presets to readymade motion animations. It’s supported only for custom animations.
9. The built-in access to text to speech voices are very basic.

They also offer an Unlimited/Premium CreateStudio version that includes many readymade templates and lots of new characters for a recurring yearly price. They regularly release premium characters, props, animations, themes. etc. every month.

I don’t own this version, but the best thing is, standard-version users can buy any of this premium stuff we want by paying a one-time fee for each.

CreateStudio Review

An excellent tool for video creation and motion graphics. Has the potential to become even better if the above limitations (some of them major) are addressed immediately.

For more info, visit https://createstudio.com/ (Copy and open on your browser)