How to build an online video maker - I interviewed the founder of VEED.io
Hey folks,
I interviewed the founder of veed.io - wanted to share a key lesson I learned from him. I asked him about SEO strategies
What SEO strategies have worked for you?
Landing pages!
Every time someone searched something like a term like “add image to video” we show up in the top few results. When you land one of our landing pages, there is just one button above the fold that takes you to our video editor. This method has proven really effective for us and we have managed to acquire the best part of 30,000 users a month with it. We actually wrote a blog post about how we got 50,000 MAU with no marking budged. If you're looking for more technical detail, check that out.
Anyone doing that too? I know Nomadlist is also very good with that strategy
You can find the full interview here: https://growthhacklist.com/interviews/how-to-build-an-online-video-maker
Hey @juhaelee and @shanefromfargo - thanks for your comments. I asked Sabba to jump into the discussion so he can answer some technical questions too!
As mentioned by Shane, I'm pretty disappointed that the article itself did not talk about how to actually build an online video editor. Nice article though!
Hey, Well it looks like I will have to do an article on how to build a video editor then :) I will let you know when its live.
Sabba
Thanks Sabba!
As mentioned in my comment below, I did something similar with https://storycreatorapp.com/. I think if there is enough interest I'd be happy to write an article on medium.com. I can talk about how I personally built a video renderer.
It's challenging but not as bad as you think. :)
@storycreator Please do a write-up, interested
Cool. Will do. I typically post updates on what I am working on here https://www.instagram.com/michaelaubry/
My goal right now is to get some user feedback then market the product hardcore. If you would like to chat for 5-10 min about what you would like to see, I would value your insight.
Cheers
Nice article, but a little disappointed it never went into how he actually built it. I've done some basic video editing in my own SaaS, and the amount of effort that went into building it was enormous! I can't imagine what it would be like building out the full functionality of what Veed has to offer.
I'm really curious how he is rendering the videos? Is he just using a tool like Puppeteer to capture the browser, or does he have some crazy complicated rendering engine?
Hi @shanefromfargo We have had a lot of requests on this topic and I think its time I put something together that explains it. the short answer is "some crazy complicated rendering engine" You can take a lot of shortcuts with Puppeteer but you hit a lot of walls and need to rewrite. We now have some pretty advance video shaders that just would not be possible with Puppeteer. Our stack also allows us to start doing some super powerfull stuff like chromakey, stabilization... Anyway, drop me a follow and I will let you know when the article is live
Awesome man! I just followed, can't wait to see the article. In the meantime could you share if you used ffmpeg to power the rendering engine?
FFMPEG is pretty much the best & only thing for splitting videos into frames and then turning those frames into a video again. I have been told lost of good things about moviepy too, but have not looked into it that much.
I just found out about veed. I am building something similar to them https://storycreatorapp.com/. I will tell you that it has been super fun working with video and graphics. Totally my passion ever since working inside my Dads media lab pretending I was Spider-Man on a green screen.
Making the rendering functionality was hard. However, the things you can do with canvas is amazing. It's crazy how imperative the details are. Going from a blank artboard to getting user input on which image, video, and text they want on the artboard. Then storing the x,y values that eventually run through the renderer.
To answer your question. At least how I did it was map what the user essentially wants into a canvas representation. The product still needs some more time to mature to reach its full potential.
To conclude, I'll say that I am a huge fan of Gary Vee and also built one-click video to subtitles using Google speech-to-text API, super fun project. I believe this is an important feature that any marketer on Social Media would need. As people tend to have their volumes down.
I wanted to build this project in dedication to my love for graphics editing tools and video editing tools. I wanted to make something simple for the busy person who wants to stay competitive but can't hire an editor or spend time learning.
If you want to stay in the loop with the progress of the app I post daily on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/michaelaubry/
I'd love to chat!
Thanks man! Just gave you a follow, with my funeral streaming SaaS we do a lot of rendering, and that made me want to pull my hair out. Hoping we can chat and swap some tips on how to make it easier.
Yeah absolutely. You can connect with me on IG if you would like to stay up to date with what I am rolling out - been moving fast. https://www.instagram.com/michaelaubry/
Just shoot me a message and we can set up a 5-10 min call. I would love to help offer some insights.