Adobe’s new app hopes to enhance digital storytelling

SINGAPORE — Adobe today (May 8) released their latest app: Adobe Voice, a presentation app that aims to allow users to create animated videos quickly and easily.

With Voice, users can user voice-overs, motion graphics, images and other effects all via a simple interface. The videos are automatically stitched together by the software — no need for longer rendering times — and the completed videos are then stored on Adobe’s Creative Cloud. These videos can then be shared via email, social media or embedding into websites. Currently there is no way to export videos to your camera roll.

“Adobe Voice is for people who have a very simple story to tell, who want to do some advertising or presentation,” said Mr Paul Burnett, Adobe APAC evangelist. “Especially students — we’ve seen a lot of interest from there.”

To help users get a feel of Adobe Voice, Adobe has included Story Starters which help guide users into telling a story, and example videos to better understand what the app can do.

Users without graphic design flair are also getting help: Adobe is providing access to over 25,000 professionally-designed icons and millions of images on the Internet, all available through a simple keyword search. Access to these materials is free, as they come under Creative Commons, which are generally free to use as long as attribution is given.

While not as full-featured as video editing programs like Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects, some of the app’s graphics engine is based on the capabilities of Adobe After Effects, and users can apply effects such as motion blur to the presentation.

A library of animated themes and music rounds off what you can add to the presentation, and the music fades in and out depending on the voice over you have recorded. For ease of recording, the voice over is recorded in sections, so you are not forced to do a perfect take in one go. The volume of each voice recording will also be adjusted by the app, and the voice is automatically cleaned up when you record it.

The music and theme library is expected to be expanded with in-app purchases down the line.

While alluded to as a “Powerpoint killer” by some publications while it was still in beta testing, Mr Burnett said that the applications were different.

“Powerpoint is for you to do live presentations,” said Mr Burnett. “Adobe Voice creates a video, which is not exactly what Powerpoint is for.”

Adobe Voice is now available on the App Store for free, but Android fans might have to wait a while — Adobe says that it is “focusing on the iPad for now”.