VideoScribe Review: Create Engaging Whiteboard Animations with Ease
Whiteboard animation videos are more popular than ever in 2024, and for good reason. Research from Wyzowl shows that viewers retain 65% of information from a video, compared to just 10% from reading text. And the hand-drawn style of whiteboard animations is especially engaging, holding viewers‘ attention for 50% longer than traditional videos.
As a result, whiteboard animation software like VideoScribe has seen explosive growth in recent years. Over 3 million users worldwide now rely on these tools to create compelling video content for marketing, education, and training.
But with so many whiteboard animation options now available, is VideoScribe still the best choice? I‘ll aim to answer that question definitively in this in-depth review.
What Makes VideoScribe Stand Out?
VideoScribe, first released in 2012 by UK-based Sparkol, is one of the pioneers in the whiteboard animation space. The company‘s tagline "Bring Your Story to Life" captures their goal of making professional-quality animations accessible to everyone.
While competitors have emerged over the years, VideoScribe has maintained its position as a market leader by continually evolving its features and pricing to meet customer needs. Some key differentiators that still hold true in 2024:
Extensive Asset Library
VideoScribe offers over 15,000 royalty-free images, characters, props and music tracks, plus premium templates. This allows anyone to create videos without design or animation experience.
Intuitive Interface
The drag-and-drop timeline makes it easy to visualize your storyboard. Smartly-organized menus and a clutter-free canvas keep the focus on your content.
Flexible Export and Sharing
Export to MP4, GIF, PPT and more, or directly publish to YouTube and social channels. Easily reuse elements across projects.
Affordable Pricing
VideoScribe is one of the few tools to still offer a lifetime license. Subscriptions start at just $8/month, putting it in reach for businesses of all sizes.
Proven Results
Customers report stellar completion rates and engagement with VideoScribe animations. HSE Logistic gained a 23% response rate on cold emails using a VideoScribe, for example.
"We found that not only are we saving a huge amount of time with VideoScribe, but we are also seeing much higher engagement rates on our videos," says Michael Traber, founder of software firm Bluetick. "It‘s been a game-changer for our content marketing efforts."
Inside VideoScribe‘s Interface
VideoScribe‘s user interface has evolved significantly since its initial release, but ease of use remains a core focus. The latest version 4.0 build on previous upgrades like:
- Improved asset search with auto-tagging of graphics by object, theme and style
- Timeline enhancements for more precise control over timing of scribe elements
- More hand types and customization options for gestures
- Expanded audio recording and editing capabilities
- Real-time collaboration features for team projects
Upon firing up VideoScribe 4.0, you‘re greeted by the main working area with the canvas on the left and libraries of images, text, and music on the right. Tabs on the left allow you to instantly switch between your current scribe, a new file, and your campaigns (i.e. directories of scribes).
The top bar provides quick access buttons for preview, settings, help and more. And along the bottom is the all-important timeline, which is your main authoring tool for synchronizing images, text, animations and audio.
The timeline‘s layout closely mirrors professional video editing software, so it will feel familiar if you‘ve worked with tools like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro. But even for total beginners, it doesn‘t take long to grasp the basics.
Each element in your scribe will have its own row on the timeline, which you can drag left or right to change the timing. Clicking an element brings up options to edit its duration, manipulate the animation, and more.
One of my favorite timeline features is "Scribe Blocks", which let you group multiple elements together so they animate simultaneously. It‘s an easy way to create more complex animation sequences while keeping everything perfectly timed.
Creating Your First Scribe
To put VideoScribe through its paces, I created a one-minute explainer video on the benefits of using whiteboard animation in marketing. Here‘s a high-level look at my workflow:
- Outlining the script: Even though there‘s no speaking in this example, I still like to start with a basic written outline to structure the story.
- Storyboarding: Next I quickly sketch out the visuals for each part of the outline – simple stick figures are fine. The goal is to conceptualize what graphics and text you‘ll need to get the point across.
- Assembling visuals: Time to gather your images! VideoScribe‘s built-in library has a huge selection to choose from. You can search by keyword and filter by categories like People, Icons, Illustrations, and more. In my marketing example, I grabbed an illustrated "customer journey" graphic and icons representing video, growth charts, and social media.
- Laying out the scribe: I created my first scene by simply dragging images from the library onto the canvas. VideoScribe automatically animates them in the order you add. I adjusted some placements, added text using the built-in editor, and set each element‘s duration in the timeline.
- Animating: This is where the magic happens. I customized the hand gesture and smoothness for each graphic to make it match my storyboard vision. VideoScribe‘s default settings produce a very natural drawing effect, but I like to play with the "bounce" and "jitter" sliders to give certain elements more character.
- Adding music: A good soundtrack makes a huge difference in your final video. VideoScribe‘s music library has thousands of professionally-composed, royalty-free tracks organized by mood. I quickly found an upbeat instrumental tune that complemented the "marketing tech" vibe I was going for.
- Finalizing the edit: With all graphics and animations in place, I spent some time fine-tuning the timing of scenes and transitions to get it just right. VideoScribe makes it simple to tweak timing and add extra frames throughout the process until you‘re completely happy.
The entire process took me just under an hour, which is quite impressive considering the professional look of the final product. And that was my first time using the latest version – I‘d expect to get even faster with practice.
Of course, more complex projects with voiceover and custom graphics will take longer. But in my experience, VideoScribe is still one of the most efficient tools for creating whiteboard animations, even at scale.
Performance and Rendering
While real-time editing performance has been stellar on my M1 Mac, early versions of VideoScribe had a reputation for sluggish loading and rendering, especially on larger projects. However, the developers have made significant strides on this front in recent years.
VideoScribe now utilizes hardware acceleration and multi-core processing to dramatically improve rendering times. On my 8-core M1 MacBook Pro, a one-minute 1080p scribe renders in just under 20 seconds. That‘s on par with competing solutions like Doodly and Explaindio.
The software also does a better job of pre-loading assets in the background, so you can start working on a new scribe almost instantly. And intelligent caching reduces memory usage over time, virtually eliminating crashes even with large asset libraries.
Perhaps most importantly, all these performance improvements haven‘t come at the expense of output quality. VideoScribe‘s HD and 4K exports are crisp and clear, with no dropped frames or compression artifacts that I could detect.
While my MacOS experience was flawless, Windows renderings tend to be about 20% slower on average according to Sparkol‘s own testing. That‘s something to keep in mind if you‘re using a lower-powered PC.
Pricing and Value
VideoScribe stands apart from most competitors by offering both a lifetime license and subscription options. Pricing for each as of June 2024 is:
| Pricing Plan | Cost | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Lifetime | $997 one-time | Unlimited scribes, free updates, premium support |
| Pro Subscription | $39/month or $288/year | Unlimited scribes, free updates, standard support |
| Starter Subscription | $8/month or $144/year | 5 scribes/month, free updates, standard support |
The lifetime license is a unique offering, and could provide significant savings for power users. Let‘s say you produce an average of 3 whiteboard scribes per month over the next 3 years. Assuming the average project is billed at $350 each, that works out to:
- VideoScribe lifetime license: $997
- Whiteboard animation services: $37,800 (3 scribes x 36 months x $350 ea)
- Total: $38,797
By comparison, hiring a professional studio for the same output would likely run well over $120,000 (3 scribes x 36 months x $1200 ea). So from a pure ROI perspective, buying VideoScribe outright could save over $80,000 even compared to outsourcing low-cost overseas animators.
If you‘re not ready to commit long-term, the $8/month starter plan is an attractive way to dip your toe in the whiteboard animation waters. You‘ll be limited to 5 scribes per month, but that‘s still enough to validate and prototype new ideas before scaling up.
What Could Still Be Improved
As much as I appreciate VideoScribe‘s feature set and performance, there are still a few areas where I think there‘s room for improvement:
Collaboration could be deeper: While you can invite others to view and comment on your scribes, true real-time co-editing a la Google Docs isn‘t supported. Asynchronous editing works okay for small teams but could become a bottleneck at scale.
Some assets feel dated: VideoScribe‘s core image and audio libraries cover a lot of ground, but certain assets are starting to show their age. More frequent updates with fresh, trendy graphics would be welcome.
More AI automation: Emerging AI technologies like Jasper are enabling video creators to automatically generate voiceovers, transcripts, and graphics based on a simple text prompt. VideoScribe has yet to incorporate these into the core product.
Sparkol has a solid track record of listening to customer feedback, so I wouldn‘t be surprised to see them address some or all of these in future releases. The company‘s robust community forum and public roadmap suggest good things to come.
Alternatives to VideoScribe
While VideoScribe is a top pick for many use cases, it‘s not the only game in town. Other whiteboard animation tools worth considering:
Doodly ($67 – $347): Doodly‘s drag-and-drop interface is even simpler than VideoScribe‘s, making it a good choice for total beginners. The lifetime license is also hundreds of dollars cheaper. On the downside, Doodly‘s asset library is much smaller and export options are limited.
Explaindio ($59 – $69/year): Explaindio offers a wider variety of animation styles beyond whiteboard, including 2D and 3D explainer "themes." It also includes a full-featured video editor with greenscreen support. But the interface is more complex, and hardcore whiteboard aficionados may find the pre-built templates too constraining.
RawShorts (starts at $39/month): RawShorts is a fully cloud-based platform for creating all sorts of explainer videos, including whiteboard animations. The collaborative workflow and rich media integrations are great for distributed teams. But you‘ll need the $99/month Premium plan to remove RawShorts branding from your videos.
For most individual creators and small businesses, I still think VideoScribe offers the best blend of power and ease of use. But if you have specific needs around cloud collaboration or diverse animation styles, one of these alternatives may be worth a look.
The Bottom Line
Whiteboard animation is a proven way to engage, educate and persuade viewers in 2024. And when it comes to actually creating those eye-catching videos, VideoScribe remains one of the most user-friendly and cost-effective solutions on the market.
VideoScribe has come a long way since its early days, with steady improvements to performance, asset management, and output quality. While a few rough edges remain, the core experience is smooth and empowering for animators of all skill levels.
The affordable subscription plans and lifetime license option also set VideoScribe apart from the pack. For many users, the one-time investment will pay for itself many times over in reduced production costs and improved conversion rates.
Of course, no software is right for everyone. If you need frame-by-frame animation control or multi-seat collaboration, you may outgrow VideoScribe‘s capabilities. And some other tools can still render videos faster on older hardware.
But for most solo creators, small teams, and even enterprise marketers, VideoScribe hits a sweet spot. It‘s flexible enough to grow with you, while remaining far easier to learn and use than pro-grade video editing software.
So is VideoScribe still worth buying in 2024? In my analysis, the answer is a resounding yes for the vast majority of whiteboard animation use cases. Whether you‘re a complete beginner or a seasoned animator, you‘ll be hard pressed to find a better all-around solution for the price.
If you‘re at all intrigued by the power of whiteboard videos, I highly recommend taking VideoScribe for a spin. Even if you decide it‘s not for you, the free trial is more than enough time to get a feel for the workflow and final outputs. Click here to get started.
Have you tried VideoScribe or another whiteboard animation tool? Let me know about your experiences in the comments below!