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🧰 Make Pro Videos Faster With These Tools
Published 8 days ago • 5 min read
🧰 Smart tools. Useful tips. Weekly.
Hola friend 👋,
I’m Josep. Each week, I hunt down practical tools and productivity hacks to help digital doers like you do more with less effort.
This week: tools to create stunning explainer videos without needing a Hollywood budget.
Video is one of the most effective ways to build trust and explain what you do, but creating high-quality video is still expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating for most creators.
The good news is you don't need a film production team anymore. I’ve been exploring some incredible tools that simplify the entire process, using AI to turn your ideas into polished videos in hours, not days. Since I actively create videos for our YouTube channel, I’ve been on the lookout for anything that can make my life easier.
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Ever wanted to create a professional video presentation without ever stepping in front of a camera? Synthesia makes it possible by letting you generate videos with hyper-realistic AI avatars.
You just type a script, choose an avatar from their library of over 150 diverse characters (or create your own), and the AI brings it to life. The avatar will narrate your text in a natural(ish)-sounding voice, complete with (somewhat) realistic facial expressions and gestures. You can also translate your video into several languages.
I seriously considered using it for our YouTube videos, but I realized it’s better suited if you want to fully generate your videos with AI, so I ended up choosing Descript instead since we present our videos.
I see this tool as a good match for creating corporate training videos, product explainers, or marketing messages at scale – especially good if you don’t have a good person to present your videos or no time for it.
While the technology is impressive and works well, it might lack the personal touch of a real human for some use cases, but for straightforward, information-based videos, it’s hard to beat.
This tool has been a complete game-changer for me. Descript revolutionizes video editing by letting you edit your video as if you were editing a text document. It’s the primary tool I use to create all the videos for our YouTube channel, and I can’t imagine my workflow without it.
Here’s how it works: you record your video (or upload a file), and Descript automatically transcribes it. From there, editing is as simple as working in a Word document. Want to remove a section? Just delete the text, and the corresponding video is gone. Want to move a clip? Cut and paste the text block. It’s incredibly intuitive and saves a massive amount of time.
Forget about adjusting keyframes and complex transitions; Descript has an intuitive way to let you add effects and (basic) animations. It also includes a decent library of stock media (videos, sound effects, and music) and even has AI features to generate content (images and videos) on the fly.
One thing I think it could improve is its screen recording tool, important for explainer videos, it’d be nice if it’d add automatic zooms or custom mouse cursors like other tools do – e.g. Screen Studio, Camtasia or FocusSee. Also, the AI animations and tools occasionally glitch (weird eyes with eye contact correction), so watch out for that.
🛠️ Alternative to: Camtasia, Synthesia or Screen Studio
If you’re looking for a versatile video creation tool, InVideo is one you should check out. It started as a solid template-based editor, which they now call InVideo Studio, but their new AI features are what really got my attention.
You can generate a complete video from a single text prompt, use the AI video editor to make complex changes with simple commands, or even create a (more or less) realistic AI avatar to narrate your content. It also includes AI voice cloning and a video translator, so you can automatically dub content into different languages.
While the free plan is a bit limited, letting you create only a couple of minutes of video a week, it’s a great way to test the platform out. Just be aware that if you’re a heavy user of the AI features, you might need to top up your credits even if you have a paid plan.
If you’ve read more than one issue of this newsletter, you’ll know I’m deep into the world of AI automation. I’m always looking for ways to automate tasks to get more done in less time. My journey started with n8n, which is fantastic for its wide range of integrations with tools like OpenAI, Gmail, and Airtable – on top of creating AI workflows.
However, as I build more complex AI agents, I’m starting to feel I'm hitting the limits of what n8n can do. That’s why I’ve been exploring Dify. It’s the second most popular no-code tool on GitHub (right after n8n), and it’s built specifically for creating sophisticated AI Agents and Workflows.
What I love about Dify is that it's open-source (meaning it’s free if you host it yourself) and comes with features designed for AI, like built-in vector databases and the ability to easily switch between different LLMs. The downside is that it doesn’t have as many pre-built integrations as n8n, so I occasionally have to get my hands dirty with API calls, which can be a bit scary.
💰 Free (self-hosted) | Cloud plan starts at $59 a month
⚡This Week’s Productivity Hack
Tired of your inbox feeling like a chaotic, endless stream of messages? Gmail’s filters are your best friend. It’s a simple but incredibly powerful feature that lets you automatically manage incoming emails, saving you time and mental energy.
With filters, you can tell Gmail exactly what to do with certain types of emails. For example, you can:
Automatically label and archive newsletters (not this one, though 😉) so they don’t clutter your main inbox.
Star emails from important people (like your boss or key clients) so they stand out.
Forward specific emails to a colleague or another one of your email addresses.
Delete spam or promotional emails that consistently slip through the cracks.
Setting it up is easy:
Open an email you want to filter or use the search bar.
Click the three dots and select “Filter messages like these.”
Set your criteria (e.g., from a specific sender, with certain keywords).
Click “Create filter” and choose what you want Gmail to do (e.g., Skip the Inbox, Apply the label, etc.).
By investing a few minutes to set up some filters, you can turn your inbox from a source of stress into a well-organized productivity machine.
🍿 Plot Twist of the Week
Could an AI chatbot give you health advice so bad it sends you to the hospital? It sounds like a dystopian movie plot, but it actually happened – source.
A man, trying to follow a new, healthy diet, turned to ChatGPT for information about the risks of consuming too much salt. The chatbot provided some answers, but it failed to warn him about the dangers of not getting enough sodium, especially when increasing water intake.
Following what he believed was sound advice, the man drastically cut his salt intake and started taking sodium bromide (whatever that is), which led to a severe case of bromide toxicity. He began experiencing debilitating seizures and ended up in the hospital.
Lesson learned: Yes, we all know we should not get health advice from ChatGPT (and similar), but seriously, we shouldn’t!
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! Next time, we’ll be exploring some of my favorite productivity tools to help you better manage your time and stay focused on what truly matters.
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