Below are some of the best Chromebook tools students can use to create, edit and share animations and videos. Some of the things you can do with these tools include creating animations, annotating videos, adding text and captions to your videos, splitting long clips into smaller ones, trimming video clips, adding soundtracks and hyperlinks to videos and many more.
1- WeVideo
One of my favourite tools for creating animations and videos on Chromebook. WeVideo provides you with all the tools you need to create professional videos. You can use its library to select pre-designed themes, music, and sounds to add to your videos. It also enables you to add custom text, voiceover recordings, custom text, slow motion, transitions and several other effects. You can trim and crop video clips, add blurred backgrounds or photo animation, and preview your final product before you share it with others.
WeVideo is integrated with Google Drive and offers various sharing options including posting directly to YouTube, Vimeo and other popular video hosting sites. You can also share your videos directly on social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
WeVideo offers free and premium plans. Videos created using the free plan include watermarks and users are limited in terms of the video editing features provided. Premium users have access to expanded music and theme libraries, green screen tools, no watermark, and many more.
WeVideo has a special version for education where educators and teachers can access a wide variety of resources and tools to help them "create multimedia content tailored to their lessons, assess student learning within the app, and foster connections in any learning setting."
2- Magisto
Magisto is another powerful platform for creating beautiful animations and videos. Students can use it to design animated photo slideshows and video collages. Using Magisto's editor, students can cut, trim, merge and reorder clips. They can also customize their videos by 'adding text, choosing fonts, changing orientation and using different colors.' Magisto offers hundreds of colorful stickers that can be easily inserted into videos.
The way Magisto works is simple and easy:
- First: 'Select photos and video clips from your gallery, Google Photos™ or iStock™ library'.
- Second: 'Pick a theme that fits the vibe and look you want to give your video: Celebrate, Love, Memories, Trailer, Extreme, Travel, and more'.
- Third: 'Pick from Magisto's vast commercially licensed song library'.
As of writing these lines, Magisto offers three plans: Premium ($4.99/month), Professional ($9.99/month), and Business ($34.99/month).
3- Clipchamp
Clipchamp is 'an in-browser video creation platform' which makes creating animations on Chromebook simple and easy. Its editor provides access to a wide variety of powerful features including: trimming, cropping, online screen recording, special effects like green screen, and many more. "Users also have access to Clipchamp’s stock library filled with over 800,000 video and audio files. Better yet, it comes with direct Google Drive and Google Photos integrations. All happens in-browser — no downloads necessary. Once the editing process is complete, Clipchamp enables users to export their videos in a range of resolutions and aspect ratios, optimized for popular sharing platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and more." Clipchamp has been acquired by Microsoft.
4- Premiere Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro stands out from the pack with some really amazing features. It provides access to professionally designed templates which you can customize and use in your own video projects. You can import clips, add effects, change colours, insert sound and music tracks, and many more. You can use Adobe Stock to search for and find music tracks, animated templates, video footage to add to your videos. Other interesting features provided by Premier Pro include automatic creation of captions with Speech to Text, automatic re-formatting of videos, matching colors with Auto-Match, and more.
As of writing these lines, Premier Pro offers special plans for students, teachers, and schools. The Creative Cloud All Apps is probably the best deal for teachers and students. Besides Premier Pro, it also offers access to 20+ desktop apps, mobile apps, and web services for a price that starts at $19.99 per month.
5- FlexClip
Use FlexClip to easily create and edit videos. You can either create your videos from scratch or use a pre-designed template. FlexClip provides you access to a huge library of animated text, elements, and stock assets to choose from. Using its FlexClip's editor you can trim, merge, compress, and converge videos. You can also add music, text, watermark, and transition to your videos.
Besides video editing, Flexclip also offers the following tools: a slideshow maker, meme generator, GIF maker, and screen recorder. The process to make videos on FlexClip consists of three main steps: Add media ('add videos or photos from computer or stock libraries to the storyboard'), Customize ('add text, music, and voiceover to customize your video'), and Export ('download your video in various ratios and definitions, then share it online with the world').
As of writing these lines, FlexClip offers four subscription plans: Free (1 stock video per project, maximum 12 projects, video length up to 1 minute), Basic ($5.99/month), Plus (($9.99/month), and Business ($19.99/month).
6- Kapwing
Kapwing is especially ideal for collaborative video editing on Chromebook. You can upload your videos and invite others to work with you on customizing and editing them. Kapwing supports various file formats including mp4, .mov, .png, .gif, .avi, .webm, and more.
'Kapwing's timeline makes it easy to split clips, rearrange videos, trim footage, and much more. Drag and drop files to move them around on the timeline. Then, drag to reposition them, all in the same editor surface. Kapwing gives you the freedom to edit video in the way that makes the most sense for your workflow. With the help of artificial intelligence, Kapwing makes the video editing process faster. Features such as auto-generation of subtitles, removing backgrounds in one click, and smart translations supercharge your creation process and turn tasks that take hours into just minutes.' Kapwing also works with several others apps such as Google Drive, Photos, Unsplash, Giphy, Pexels, and many more.
As of writing these lines, Kapwing offers three subscription plans: Free, Pro ($16/month), and For Teams (($16/month).
