Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazing work man! This looks and feels great! Dropped it on producthunt, hope you get some boost there!
Also what does dropped it on PH mean?
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Show HN: I built an After Effects for dummies
251–260 of 300 posts
Re: Show HN: I built an After Effects for dummies
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I came to say the same thing. If you're going to compare yourself to AE, then you better bring some heavy hitting features. The iMovie comparison is exactly what I was thinking. It's a FisherPrice "baby's first NLE". That sounds a lot harsher than I mean for it to be, but it is apropos. People that have never used an editor and wants to get into it, then this very well may be an amazing option for them. For $32/mo th…
You can't just compare it by saying "$50/mo gets you the full Adobe Suite" -- there's a hidden cost there. Yes, you get access to the full Adobe Suite of software, but there's a huge learning curve that comes with that and dozens (hundreds?) of hours of learning required to get good. This tool seems pretty much effortless to learn and use. There's intrinsic value in that.
This is $32/mth for fewer features than iMovie - which isn't exactly a difficult tool to learn. And is also free. And works on your phone/tablet with no separate content upload step.
This reminds me of those canned Flash and js animation sites from 10-15 years ago - where people who couldn't learn ActionScript or js would pay $$$$$ for a basic text explode or image carousel.
It's a perfectly viable business model, but it is rather literally aiming at the Dummies part of the market.
The best part of this is the marketing and the site design, not the actual product.
Re: Show HN: I built an After Effects for dummies
#253This is so cool! Some specific thoughts - My finger slipped and it wheecht me out of the editor before I'd finished editing the video - maybe it could prompt me to confirm if I want to leave the editor/save my work if I've made changes? - Is it possible to disable the browser right click/context menu on the timeline? I expected to get some additional options but got the browser context menu instead So cool! Well done
Great point. I do an auto save every 3 seconds, but yes if you go back before then it's game over haha. I will check to see if it's possible to disable that I remember this being a hard thing to do on another project I was working on. Ill look into it again :) worst case I'll see if I can trigger a save function on a back event. I'd love to have a custom context menu. What options would you expect to find?
Ah awesome. Yes I see now that it's autosaved, I didn't realise that when I ended up on the homepage :) It's easy to swipe left accidentally on the MacBook trackpad and end up on the previous page.
Re. context menu, I think I just expected to be able to copy and paste the element there. I suppose most people are used to desktop video editors where you can right click and copy a clip
Re: Show HN: I built an After Effects for dummies
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep things reasonably priced and allow your user base to grow. There is a huge market for the casual user.
True. I have considered a one time fee with upgrades.
Don't. No matter how many people vocally moan about subscriptions (myself included), the fact is if you are actually creating value for users then people will pay them.
One time fees lead to bloated software, most of the money is in making upgrade versions and forcing users to pay again, which means there is a huge financial incentive to constantly add features that sound cool whether or not users actually use them.
For pricing IMO your starting sweet spot will be around $10/month. There's a benefit in charging something and getting people signed up with their card details. At some point in the future you may find it beneficial to charge $5/m to get more users through the door and make money through extras. Just my 2 cents.
Re: Show HN: I built an After Effects for dummies
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
This means a lot. I have spent some time getting it down. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears haha. I agree with the templates. I am trying to allocate my time wisely and I think expanding that will be major. I am drawing up a way to make it even easier for people to create amazing videos. When you click "add new video" I plan to make it interactive and guide you along every step. Your options will be Do you want to cre…
> I agree with the templates. I am trying to allocate my time wisely and I think expanding that will be major. Maybe worth trying out some "Create and share templates in your free plan, earn upgrades to 3 months worth of Pro plan when 5 other users create with your templates!" kind of crowd sourcing and network effect thing?
Are the people creating templates interested in this product, though? If I was a creator, I'd rather want to sell a premium template and get a percentage of each sale – or if they were included for free in the premium plan, then a kickback from the premium plan sales.
Re: Show HN: I built an After Effects for dummies
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
FFMPEG is super powerful. Michael, do you take screenshots on a headless browser and stitch them using FFMPEG? At least, that's what I have done for a hobby project.
FFMPEG IS GOAT haha. It took me awhile to understand how the I/O streams worked, and the complex filters worked, but once you get it there is a lot of power in your hand. Yeah I did that initially but then I found a better technique. There are some pieces using that method and it's a fantastic approach until you reach 30 fps over the course of a 10 min video.
Do you mind sharing what the technique is?
Re: Show HN: I built an After Effects for dummies
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
umm... are all these people pushing to increase price serious? I know you want to encourage, but After Effects is "only" $20/mth.
How many people know how to use AfterEffects or can spend time learning it? Its not this app vs After Effects. Its this vs hiring someone who knows to use After Effects. Or this vs spending time learning to use a professional video editing tool
There's two kinds of users here, users who don't want to pay $20/m but have time (e.g. students) and users who have little time to learn AE but more money. They want to capture both. So the approach is to make the starting price appropriate for group A and then find something that group B wants and upsell it to them.
Re: Show HN: I built an After Effects for dummies
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
> pushing to increase price serious? I agree. I'm puzzled why this is getting so much excitement, it's hardly in the ballpark of "After Effects".
Let's see your product that you've coded? I spent years learning to code. Dropped everything to live in a car in Silicon Valley so I didn't have to work at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. I then worked my way up to a $200k salary. Quit that to pursue being an entrepreneur. Last year I made $20k and risked it all for this. Thanks for your time and energy checking it out though. I'm looking forward to your vers…
but..but... can you reverse a linked list? JK! Hope all of your sacrifices paid off!
Re: Show HN: I built an After Effects for dummies
#259I showed this to a youtuber friend with 4m subscribers. His first response was "looks easier than our current workflow, but we upload in 4K currently and the demo maxes out at 720p".
To be fair, he probably uses After Effects way more than the average expected subscriber, so this isn't a representative sample.
Re: Show HN: I built an After Effects for dummies
#260Very, very nicely done indeed. That's a LOT of work.
It takes me back to the days when I built a web-based editor for SMIL and 'HTML+TIME' nearly 20 years ago (!!). ("smibase")