How to Make an Effective App Video for Less Than $70 Dollars

12 min readAug 19, 2014

All you need is a Mac, Keynote, iMovie and some graphic and audio assets

If you’re an indie app developer and don’t have 100k for a Sandwich, or skills with a full frame DSLR, complete with lighting kit, then you’re left with only a few cost effective options for creating an explainer video for your app. Let’s be clear — you will not win any Academy Awards for this video nor will you get aqui-hired based on its amazing display of cinematic technique. Thus the term “effective”. This is an approach that gets you a decent starter app video and provides something worthwhile to put in your press kit. It’s also kinda fun to make, so enjoy it.

In this video post-mortem, I’ll walk through the exact steps we used to make the Snap Task app video. All you really need is a Mac, Keynote, iMovie and some graphic and audio assets, most of which are either free or less than $50. Here’s the video for Snap Task:

https://vimeo.com/103267861

Why Make an App Video

The strongest argument for an app video is your Press Kit. See here (why a decent video is better than no video) plus some general app promotion write ups here and here. Most likely your video will not drive significant additional downloads or go viral, it’s mostly for the press so that when you send out emails asking for coverage or to introduce the app, journalists and bloggers have a nice media element to link to, watch, embed or even write about.

Also, keep in mind that Apple has App Previews coming to the app store soon-ish, so you will really want to have a video to showcase your app. The format is different but you can still use the same techniques outlined in this post.

Getting Started

Enough preaching, let’s get to the steps. Here’s the the breakdown of what you’ll need — base assumption is you have a Mac with Mavericks, XCode and QuickTime.

Keynote — $9.99 or free if you have a newer Mac
iMovie 10.0.4 — $14.99 or free if you have a newer Mac
Voiceover <= 200 words — $40 (will vary by provider)
Music from Garageband — free with Mac OS
Audio editing tool Audacity — free
GIMP or Photoshop or any photo editing tool that does Blur effects — free (GIMP)
XCode simulator — sunk cost
QuickTime — part of Mac OS
Background graphic — free
iPhone skin graphic — free

Total $65, which turns out, is less than the $70 I put in the title of this post. Perfect!

Total time estimate? 8–10 hours of effort, 5–7 days duration (waiting for voiceover, finding music, etc.). I’m also assuming you are somewhat comfortable working with timeline based software like GarageBand, Audacity and iMovie. If not there are lots to tutorials out there to help you .

Step 1 — Write the Script

You’ll need a script for the voiceover. The voiceover artist serves as your spokesperson and should function much like an excited friend who is explaining an app they really like to another friend. Upbeat, casual and friendly yet also clear and informative. Pick VO talent that have an excited tone without coming off as sales-y.

I wrote our script in about 30 minutes (169 words) after thinking about it for a few days. There are plenty of app videos out there to find inspiration for your script (see links at bottom). I would keep the length under 200 words as that worked out to about 2 minutes in our video. 2 minutes is probably the max you want so that people don’t lose interest and tune out. Explain your app’s functionality and provide clear definitions of significant feature sets.

Step 2 — Find a Voiceover Artist

We used fiverr.com as they have some great VO talent that will do 25 or more words for $5. Usually you can just order extra gigs for any additional words you need over the 25 (or whatever their max is). Male or female doesn’t really matter. It’s up to you to decide which is better for your product. Order your VO gig, which usually delivers within 5–6 days, and while you’re waiting get started on the next steps.

Step 3 — Build the Keynote Template

We used Keynote to create the basic background template and to embed the simulator video capture and screenshot animations. From Keynote we’re able to do an HD export of all the pieces together in one video, then bring those videos into iMovie to assemble on the timeline. We tried pulling them into iMovie as separate assets but then the transitions between scenes looked bad, as the assets would animate separately and not move together seamlessly (you can do this in Final Cut Pro, but it’s $299 plus learning curve).

Keynote is Apple’s version of PowerPoint and it’s great for assembling multimedia because it has really solid animations out of the box and they are easy to implement. We also use Keynote to mock up wireframe animations to show to clients, designers and developers that we work with.

There are two Keynote templates we need — the first one is the template for the screenshot animations, which we are mixing in with simulator video capture in order to mix up the scenes and keep things interesting. The second template is for the video capture where the “live” app is shown inside the iPhone device. This template has a title text field at bottom left. Both Keynote template files should have a document size of 1920 x 1080, for 1080 HD export. Tap on the Document menu item at top and set the slide size to Widescreen (16:9).

So for the template we need:

Background image in high res jpg or png format, with Gaussian or Surface blur for a film camera type effect (aka rack shot or rack focus). You can import your image into GIMP, Photoshop or any other tool you use and apply a blur until you get the desired effect. Then export to jpg or png and bring into your keynote file. Use a 1920 x 1080 file size for 1080p HD, which will match the Document size.
Add a Title text field to the second keynote template to indicate what functionality is being shown. This is optional but we think it looks good as it juxtaposes with the iMove titles that are used for screenshot animation sequences.
iPhone device image. For the second template we need a high res image of an iPhone (or whatever device you want to show). Bring that into your second Keynote template and center it. Keynote should provide snap to center coordinates as you to drag the image into the center of the window. Our iPhone image is sized at 506 x 1052 px and centered.

Once you have assets in place and they are positioned where you want them, select the background and iPhone image and select Arrange -> Group and then Arrange -> Lock. This way these pieces never get accidentally moved and you can reuse the Keynote template for all your screenshot and app play videos.

Step 4 — Screenshots

Use the XCode simulator File -> Save Screen Shot menu option to save the screenshots you want to use. We decided to setup each live app play scene with a screenshot animation, again to keep things interesting, although we did skip a few and only showed screenshots (again, mix it up so the viewer isn’t bored). Save your screenshots from the retina 4-inch simulator into a folder where your project is, so you have them all in one place.

For each set of functionality in your script you’ll want some combination of animated screenshots and app play video. So for your first scene, bring a screenshot or two into your Keynote file. Resize them on the keynote template so there’s some space at top and bottom (see screens above). You can set animations by clicking on the image and selecting Animation from the right side menu. There you can choose from a variety of animation styles and set their duration and enter / exit behaviors.

You can preview the animations in place or play the entire slideshow. When playing the slideshow you have to hit enter to trigger each animation (don’t worry, when you export to video everything will play automatically). Mix up your animations. Don’t use the same animation more than once, at least not in a row, and change up the slide in / out locations so each scene has a different feel.

Step 5 — Video Capture

This is the toughest part in that the simulator recording is done using QuickTime and you have to manually select the window frame to record. You have to do this each time so there is the chance that you will not select the same frame each time (because you are manually dragging to select a record area), but you should be able to get close. Then, once you bring it into Keynote you can control the size by setting it’s Size property. Each video clip will have the same size, so the clips are consistent and play inside the phone graphic in the same spot every time.

Follow these steps for each video clip you want to show:

Run the app in the simulator, so it fits on screen. Preferably on a Cinema display or equivalent so that you can get the largest simulator possible.
Start QuickTime and select File -> New Screen Recording.
Hit the red record button and drag over the simulator to select the record area. You need to select the same record area for each video you make. Don’t select the edge of the simulator, only the app area. This is the video you will embed into the phone graphic in your Keynote template (template 2).
Go through the app steps you want to record.
Stop recording by clicking the black record icon on the Mac menu bar.

Now you have a video recorded from QuickTime. Save the .mov file in a directory where all your movies will go.

Repeat this process for every video scene you want to make. If there’s a better way to do this screen video capture, please let me know! I know many people use Reflector with AirPlay to record from an ios device. This will give you a more consistent result, unfortunately we had some some issues with our status bar color changing during Reflector recording. Also, Reflector doesn’t show any animations when you tap on your app’s UI elements, so it leaves the video a little vague in terms of what’s actually happening (this is an area that can be improved in our process as well).

Step 6 — Bring Video into Keynote

Now drag that .mov file into your Keynote template with the iPhone graphic (Keynote template 2). You’ll see I setup a horizontal and vertical guide to get a visual on where the video should sit. After placing the video file on the Keynote stage, adjust the size using the Size settings on the sidebar. Once you have it right you will use these settings for every video file in every template. That way things aren’t moving around on screen in your final video. Make sure your background assets are all Sent to Back so nothing covers up the video.

Add the Text Field for the scene title at the bottom left, or wherever you want it.

Step 7 — Export HD Video from Keynote

Now you should have all your Keynote files created for both screenshot animation and app play video capture scenes. Now we want to export those scenes to 1080p HD video, which we’ll then bring into iMovie and arrange on the timeline.

Make sure you export with the Self Playing setting, so that the entrances, exits, video and animations all auto play. Also make sure you select 1080p and set “Go To Next Slide After” to 2 seconds. This will give you some padding in case you want to linger on a scene for a bit longer, maybe to have the VO catch up or for any other reason. You can adjust the clip’s play duration later in iMovie.

Keynote QuickTime export settings, 1080p with Self Playing setting

Step 8 — Background Music

Launch Garageband and pick something from the loops list, filtered by “Jingles”. There will be a selection of pre-assemble audio clips that make for good background music. You don’t want anything crazy — even if you’re a big Metal fan or love John Coltrane, stick to something that is mainstream and won’t be too distracting. The focus of the video is your app, the background music is just there to provide some punch.

Drag the audio clip to the timeline and loop it till it’s about 60 seconds long. You can repeat the loop later in iMovie, or shorten it, once you know how long the movie will be. Once it’s ready, select the Share menu and Export Song to Disk as .aac file type.

Step 9 — Assemble in iMovie

Launch iMovie and create a new Event for your project. Events are essentially projects that have multiple sub-projects (movies or trailers). All the video clips, sound and images you bring into an Event can be used by all the movie projects in that Event.

Drag the VO audio files (you should cut the VO audio into individual clips so you can move them around on the timeline — I used Audacity), the background music and all your .mov movies exported from Keynote into the Event. Create a new movie in that Event from File -> New Movie. Drag movie clips and audio from the Events Library onto the timeline and you can begin to see the project coming together (finally!).

You can see from the image how the final timeline looks. iMovie has a bunch of different Transitions and Titles you can use, so mix them up between scenes. You also notice that there is one main audio track, in this case our VO, and then background audio which is grouped together with the movie clips and transitions. You can adjust the audio volume for your Background music by selecting it and editing it’s properties from above the movie preview pane.

Make sure the background music is significantly lower than the VO — this isn’t a music video, showcase the VO so viewers can clearly hear it. I also like to place the VO, for most scenes, a bit ahead of the scene itself so the viewer hears first, then sees. Just play around with it and you’ll get the right feel for your video. Look at examples out there to see how the pros do it.

Again, make things interesting for the viewer by using different transitions. We used Fade to Black at the end and also faded out our background music, but hey, be creative and maybe come up with something else. And…don’t forget to QA the video! Just like your with your code, have someone else look at it, test it on Vimeo and YouTube, watch it in a few different browsers and also view it on a mobile device. Per Dan Counsell’s advice, use Vimeo for embedding in your site or blog and use the YouTube link for the press kit.

When it’s ready, use the Share menu to export to file. Save in 1080p HD and…you’re done!

In the end, it’s important that the video showcases your app’s functionality and creates a compelling marketing piece for the press and for users. There’s no guarantee that this will result in any net benefit for you or your app, but most people aren’t making app videos so it can at least give you some kind of differentiator.

Different Approaches

There is a wide spectrum of approaches to app videos, from fully animated to elegantly filmed using actors and a hipster art cafe setting (yes Adam, I’m talking to you). You could even scratch the video and just do a Vine, but maybe without the broken glass. Here are some additional links to check out:

Types of Startup Videos

10 Best Startup Explainer videos

Anatomy of a Product Video

Selligy iPhone app filming rig

Online service — Wooshii

Another service — Smartshoot

Snap Task Album on Vimeo