The Best 2-minute Video Slideshow Creator (with Music) in 2021

Probably the easiest way to create promo videos for video marketing your business, product, or service to the world.

Video is Big Business

According to data from Cisco Systems, IP video traffic will dominate over everything else with a majority of 82% in 2021, reaching 227.6 Exabytes per month over the course of the year.

For reference, 1 Exabyte or 1EB is equal to 1 billion GB.

That’s about 10 million full-length 4K movies.

If the Earth was 1GB, the Sun would be one-thousandth of 1EB.

So where’s all this video traffic coming from? Not just Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, et al, surely.

No, the bulk of this is coming from consumers sharing videos on social media.

Did you know that YouTube gets about 300 hours of video uploaded to its servers… EVERY 60 SECONDS? That works out to 25.92 billion hours of video per day or approx. 9.5 TRILLION hours of video per year.

How Do I Create My Own Videos?

So video is big; we know that. But how do you get in on the game? I’m not talking about making money off YouTube or anything like that. I’m simply talking about getting your videos out there in the simplest way possible. And if you’re running a business, video marketing is a critically important component of your digital marketing strategy.

It all comes down to the question of ‘how do I create videos’? Almost none of the billions of people who upload videos to platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. are professional videographers. Maybe a fraction of one percent of them has some experience.

Most learned as they went along. You can, too.

Today, We’re going to show you some very cool video editors that you can use to quickly make a slideshow video to publish on any social site.

What is a Slideshow Video?

Think of it as a sequential collage of photos, images (yup, GIFs, too!), and video clips set to music. It’s simple to create, and if you have the right tools, you can make it even more professional-looking by using filters, text, and other effects. Let’s show you how to do this using a very intuitive online video editor called Wondershare VidAir Slideshow Maker with Music. We’ll also show you several other tools that can you can try on your own.

VidAir: Creating a Video Slideshow with Music

Wondershare VidAir is a SaaS video editor for brands to promote themselves with short and engaging videos set to music. It comes with a large collection of assets that include images, photos, video clips, and music tracks. All assets are free to use for commercial purposes except some music tracks, but you can check the copyright notice before you add the track to your video.

The platform itself is free to use up to a certain limit, after which you can upgrade for as little as six bucks a month, billed annually.

First, set up a free account on the Wondershare VidAir website.

When you see the Templates page, just click the Start from Scratch…

You’ll see a pop-up window to choose the aspect ratio of the video, where you can select one of three options — square, vertical, or horizontal.

Tip: If you’re sharing to a platform like Instagram or its long-form video channel IGTV, then vertical or square would be good. They do accept horizontal but IGTV is a big fan of vertical videos.

For our example, we’ll use a horizontal video format.

You will now see this default view of the VidAir video editor with the tools panel on the left, the tool preview next to it, then the video preview pane in the top middle, the timeline editor below it, and the Inspection pane on the top right.

Time to get started!

A default blank screen is already added as your base intro clip. You can replace that, add a clip, crop it, or duplicate it by clicking the ellipsis (three horizontal dots) in the middle of that clip.

Once you click on Add Clip, for instance, you can choose to Upload a clip of your own or use one of the available royalty-free videos and images on VidAir.

For our example, we added some text and a sticker to the blank screen and applied a filter using the Inspector panel on the right.

Once the first scene was ready, we used the Add Scene button (the red one above the timeline) and added a collection of photos from the royalty-free collection. If you’re creating a slideshow with your own content, you can use the Upload button when you hit Add Scene.

We also added some text to each of those sections by choosing Add Text after clicking the track above the individual clips…

Likewise, we added more scenes with a different photo for each. You can use photos, videos, and other imagery, add text and stickers, and add filters and change other attributes.

For the end section, we used our logo as the image, and the platform automatically gave it a nice offset effect. If you don’t want that, you can crop the logo or apply a smaller size so it fits into the video.

Finally, we added some Fade transitions in between clips to give it a more polished look.

Once the video was done, we went to the audio section and selected a nice eerie-sounding piece that matched the tone of the visuals. VidAir lets you edit the duration of the audio track so you can pick out a section that matches the video slideshow.

That’s it! We just clicked Export…

And this was the resulting video we created, which we uploaded to Vimeo for the purpose of sharing it here.

Although this is a 6-minute read so far, it literally took us just two minutes to put together this video. The VidAir site is quite intuitive and has an impressive collection of templates, videos, images, and audio that can you use to create a video slideshow. It’s a little rough around the edges but updates are quick since it’s basically a SaaS application, and new features are periodically added.

Once you’re done, you can share the video directly from the platform or download it to your desktop.

The Best Video Editors to Create Video Slideshows with Music

Magisto

While VidAir is primarily for businesses, Magisto is a great app for personal use as well as video marketing for businesses with tight budgets. The site offers themes for various events and platforms and you have access to a huge collection of themed templates to get you started.

Unfortunately, there’s no free version so boohoo. However, you get a free trial if you opt for the Professional or Business plans, which also come with access to Getty Images’ iStock collection of stock photos and videos.

The really cool thing about Magisto is not actually the online video editing tool but the mobile apps for iOS and Android. That’s where the magic really is. The apps are super-simple to use. Just pick a template, select your media, reorder them, add filters, stickers, etc., add music, and you’re done.

You can also use it as a mobile video editor to trim, cut, and do other edits. Here’s a snapshot of the app’s features as listed on the Google Play Store:

Movavi

Movavi offers the full spectrum of desktop versions for Mac and Windows as well as mobile versions for iOS and Android. This one’s ideal for anyone with some video editing experience since it offers some slightly advanced editing features like pan/zoom, etc.

Of course, that doesn’t preclude noobs from trying it out. In fact, the interface on the mobile versions is pretty intuitive and flows well. Here’s what they’ve listed as features on the Apple App Store listing:

Bye Now….Oh, Wait!

Not to leave you empty-handed, we brought along a few tips to share with you. After all, only a shared meal is a satisfying meal, right? So here goes…

Record in High Quality

This cannot be overstated. Grainy videos make us cringe and feel bad for the publisher. Even if the content is great, poor quality takes all the attention away. Well, unless it’s a rare shot of the Lochness Monster or the Abominable Snowman.

So, always shoot at a frame rate of 60 fps or higher and a resolution of 1080p or higher. If your device supports a higher quality, go for it.

It’s better to load up your memory card or internal memory quickly with high-quality stuff than have hundreds of videos that you can’t really do anything with except maybe share with your sympathetic friends.

Preview, Preview, Preview

It’s always a good idea to preview your video on a large screen like a TV to make sure the contrast is right, the saturation is appropriate, and so on. While most mobile screens are good enough for this from a resolution and color fidelity perspective, they’re small enough to hide major flaws that’ll backfire when your videos are played on computer monitors or larger formats.

Another great idea is to upload it to YouTube or, like we did, Vimeo (as a private video if you like.) This lets you check if the audio is okay, if the aspect ratio you chose is appropriate, and so on.

Double-, Triple-, and Quadruple-check

Finally, before you upload any video to an important social channel, run it by a few of your closest cohorts to make sure you haven’t missed anything. It’s always good to have a second, third, or even fourth set of eyes looking at it before you irrevocably send it on its way to thousands — and hopefully millions — of people around the world.