Oakland, CA—According to a new study by Suite 48 Analytics, DIY video creation apps are a powerful driver behind the surge in the sharing and viewing of user-generated videos. These do-it-yourself apps are used by non-video professionals. Moreover, AI-based innovations enable this new generation of apps to overcome the traditional dilemma of creative power versus ease of use.
The DIY Video Creation Apps study, released March 31, takes a deep dive into the trends at the core of today’s successful DIY video creation apps. They include smartphone, web– and desktop-based apps. Furthermore, the study analyzes 82 popular innovative apps.
The study found that, while video editing is a proven use case, the traditional approach—offering timelines and layers to trim and composite video clips—has not attracted users beyond the core market of professionals and technically proficient hobbyists.
DIY Video Creation Apps Study
According to the study, more successful approaches to getting mainstream adoption are based on adjacent use cases and user behaviors. These include apps that originally offered animated slideshow creation features but evolved into more sophisticated video trailer creation apps.
The app segment that successfully tapped into the popularity of easy-to-create phodeos is another example. (Phodeos are hybrid photo/videos, such as animated GIFs, Apple Live Photos, Boomerangs.) What’s more, they enable the creation of short music video clips; they offer the potential of expanding these clips into longer form video creation.
“The baby steps that take these products beyond the familiar are what has the greatest impact,” said Hans Hartman, the study’s principal author. “Too often we underestimate how fundamentally new it is for most people to work with videos. Everyone now has a device in their pocket that makes it as easy to capture videos as it is to shoot photos.
“But how do you make the footage shorter, more engaging and also good enough to share on social media or use for marketing purposes? That requires dealing with the complexities of an additional dimension—time—as well as an extra media format—audio.”
The first generation of DIY video apps for consumers, SMBs and enterprise workers delivered the necessary tools to deal with these added elements. However, they were generally too complex and demanding to enable mainstream adoption, according to the study. 
Conversely, apps that have embraced the alternative approach—prioritizing ease of use over creative control by offering templates and stock photos, videos and music libraries—have grown in popularity. But they have not met the needs of more demanding users who require tools that make their creations stand out from the crowd.
The Sweet Spot
A promising third approach, according to the study, is being taken by innovative, often AI-based apps. These apps manage to hit the sweet spot between ease of use and creative control. They offer powerful features such as one-click background removal throughout the video. Another example is the ability to type text that changes the words spoken by people featured in the video; as a result, they eliminated the need to reshoot.
The 94-page DIY Video Creation Apps report analyzes 82 DIY video creation apps in the following categories: beyond photos video creation apps; web-based video creation apps; smartphone-based video creation apps; desktop-based video creation apps; camera manufacturer video creation apps; as well as video APIs and SDKs.
