Pictory is a video creation software powered by artificial intelligence. Whether you want to create short excerpts from your webinars and Zoom meetings or you need to create engaging brand videos for your marketing campaigns, Pictory can help.
Using the power of AI, Pictory will help you reduce the hassle and effort usually involved in brand video creation. It does most of the work for you.
Today, I will be reviewing Pictory. I will be discussing its features and providing a thorough overview of how it works.
I will also go over some pros and cons to help you decide whether Pictory is for you.
The short version: Pictory is a powerful tool that will help you supercharge your video marketing campaigns and get a lot more done.
It uses AI to help you summarize videos, generate videos from text, and more, but it’s also important to recognize the limitations of AI and ensure you review each video manually before publishing it.
Read on to see my full Pictory review.
Features and Capabilities
Let’s start by discussing the main features of Pictory and the experience you can expect after signing up.
To start with, I found Pictory relatively easy to use. The website is well-designed and easy to navigate, and since you don’t need to enter a credit card to sign up for the free trial, there’s no harm in doing so.
As you can see in the following screenshot, there are multiple use cases you can choose from.
The first is turning a script into a video. You can input a professional script and have Pictory output a video.
Another option is inputting a published article on the web instead of a written script. If you wrote a blog post or sales page, for example, just copy and paste the URL and you can generate a video.
There are various AI voices you can select from to do the voiceovers in the text-to-speech option. However, if you want, you are free to upload your own voiceovers as well.
Whether you input a script or article, you can have Pictory select the most important sentences and paragraphs from the text using AI technology. That way, you won’t generate a long video that contains irrelevant information.
The third option is editing a video. This isn’t a standard video editor; it’s unlike anything I’ve seen so far.
When you upload a video, the tool will start by transcribing the video and adding a transcription to the left side of the screen.
You can then edit the video by editing the text. For example, you can delete certain sentences or paragraphs from the text section to cut those parts out of the video or search for specific words in the transcription using the search tool.
To be clear, when you delete a sentence or word from the transcript, it will delete it from the video as well. It’s great if you want to edit out filler words like “umm.”
Don’t worry – you don’t have to manually go through the transcript and edit out each filler world. Just click on “Remove filler words” and/or “Remove silences” to automatically clean up your video.
Pictory will use AI to identify filler words and cut them out.
You can also search for words in the transcript and delete or replace all instances of that word or phrase.
This tool can also summarize videos for you. It will summarize the transcript by selecting the most important points, depending on how long you want your final video to be, and then cut out the rest.
This option is perfect if you want to summarize long Zoom meetings or press conferences and extract the most important points. If the video is very long, that would usually take a lot of time and revision, but Pictory automates the process for you.
I love how there are different length options. You can choose how much of the original video you want the final video to be, ranging from 5% to 75% – Pictory will tell you how long each option would end up being.
While doing that, you have the option to change the default video scenes for specific sections by uploading different media from the media library. Just search through the media library to find matching images.
The Pictory media library has over three million images and video clips as well as over 15,000 music tracks that you can add to your videos! All the media in the library is royalty free, so you can use them without worrying about copyright claims.
Alternatively, instead of letting AI automatically select the highlights from the video, you can select the most important highlights manually.
When editing a video, you can automatically add captions. There are many styles of captions to choose from.
Also, you can change the layout of your video (portrait, landscape, etc.) so you can publish it on different platforms.
The fourth option is to generate a video by uploading existing images and video scripts.
Click on “Customize Video” in the video editor to be taken to the video customization options.
As you can see, Pictory uses AI to break down the video into scenes, so you can easily navigate within the video you are editing.
You will also have the option to upload images and audio tracks, which I mentioned earlier.
In addition, you can add stickers, GIFs from GIPHY, emojis, and text. Furthermore, you can add branding to customize your video for your brand.
Pictory is fast, as it uses its unique “ReelFast” technology to help you generate videos within minutes.
After you create a video, you can share it to social media with ease. Pictory integrates with Hootsuite, a highly popular social media management tool that allows you to schedule posts in advance and have them published to multiple social media networks.
Pictory also has other great plans up its sleeve. You can check out all the future Pictory plans on the roadmap.
While AI is powerful right now, imagine how powerful it will be in a few years. Therefore, we can expect Pictory to be constantly improving as well.
Usability
Like I said, I found Pictory incredibly easy to use. Signing up with my Google account took around a minute, tops.
The user interface is clean and easy to navigate. You don’t have to be technologically advanced to use Pictory, as the steps are clearly laid out.
You can start by using the demo video provided. Just click on “Try with demo video,” and Pictory will automatically take you to the editor, where you can start editing a demo video.
When you first start using the video editor tools, Pictory will take you through a short wizard that will introduce the various main functions of Pictory and how to use them. It will do the same when you start using certain tools, such as the style customization tool.
There is a learning curve, but it’s not long. I am not an expert in video editing by any means, but I was able to figure out how to use Pictory without any difficulties.
As long as you go through the introductory wizards and are willing to play around a little with the demo video, you will have no trouble using Pictory at all.
Not only that, but there are video tutorials on the site that show you how to use each editing option.
Pictory also offers various training and educational videos in the Video Marketing Masterclasses section. These videos go beyond simply teaching you how to use the Pictory platform and provide you with helpful video marketing tips and advice.
One of the biggest things going for Pictory’s usability is that it is entirely cloud based. There is no need to download any software to your device.
It also means that it is cross-platform. Whether you have a Windows or a Mac device, you can log into the cloud editor and work on your projects.
You can invite team members to work on your projects by entering their email addresses and sending them an invitation. Again, they will not have to download any software, and they can join you from any device to collaborate on your project.
However, while it works on any computer, I would advise you to use a laptop or desktop instead of a mobile device. That will allow you to get the most out of Pictory, because it’s not really designed to work on mobile.
Unfortunately, Pictory does not yet have a mobile app.
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Pricing and Value for Money
Let’s talk a bit about how much you can expect Pictory to cost you.
To start with, Pictory offers a free trial. The free trial is not based on time but on projects; it allows you to create up to three video projects, each 10 minutes long, so you get a chance to test the power of Pictory.
You do not need a credit card to sign up for the free trial, so you don’t have to worry about canceling a subscription if you don’t want to proceed with paying for one.
There are three paid plans on Pictory (the lower price is if you pay annually while the higher price is if you pay monthly):
- Standard, $19-23/month: This plan lets you create 30 videos a month, 10 hours of video transcription a month, and text-to-video projects of 10 minutes each. For video editing, you can edit videos of up to one hour in length. You can create three branded templates, choose from 5,000 audio tracks, and use 34 AI voices.
- Premium, $39-47/month: 60 videos a month, 20 hours of video transcription, text-to-video projects of up to 20 minutes in length, edit video recordings of up to three hours long, create 10 branded templates, choose from 10,000 audio tracks, and enjoy 60 AI voices. It also includes other perks, like automatic video highlights and Hootsuite integration.
- Teams, $99-119/month: You can add up to three users per account instead of one. You also get more audio tracks, increased video lengths, etc.
Always check the pricing page for updated pricing information.
In my opinion, it’s great value for money. The Standard plan should be enough for most casual users, and you can always upgrade later.
How does Pictory compare to its competitors? Let’s look at two other AI video editors:
- Kapwing has a free plan, but its premium plan starts at $16/month when billed annually or $24/month when billed monthly.
- Collosyan is $28/month when billed annually and $35/month when billed monthly.
As you can see, Pictory is fairly priced and cheaper than some competitors like Collosyan.
Customer Support and Service
Pictory provides support via email. You can send a message to info@pictory.ai to message the team about general inquiries.
However, if you signed up for an account, either as a paying member or free trial user, you can also submit a ticket. To do that, click on Help in the top menu.
You will first be taken to the knowledge database, which includes questions about various topics related to using Pictory. You may find an answer to your question there, but if you don’t, you can also scroll to the bottom and click on the “Submit a Ticket” button.
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Pros and Cons
Let’s talk about the pros and cons of using Pictory. No app is without its downsides, so here are some things you should know about before deciding to try it.
Major Advantages
- There is a free trial that doesn’t require a credit card.
- Plans are affordable.
- Pictory has a massive media library.
- It is easy to use and navigate.
- It can summarize long videos for you and turn scripts and articles into videos.
- You have full customization and control over your videos.
- There is no need to download any software.
Major Disadvantages
- Automatic transcriptions can sometimes be off or wrong.
- The AI is good, but it’s not perfect at highlighting the most important parts of a video. It could skip certain important sections or include unimportant things.
- The resulting video can seem a bit off or unnatural if you don’t go over it manually and make sure it flows right. Otherwise, it could seem disjointed.
- There is no mobile app that allows you to edit videos easily on mobile devices.
Pictory is an awesome tool, but it’s critical to recognize the limitations of AI. Artificial intelligence is constantly evolving and improving, but it is by no means perfect.
If you ever tried ChatGPT, you will realize that while it can generate a lot of text, the texts usually sound a bit off. Sometimes, it says things that don’t make sense, don’t fit the context, or are just false.
In addition, it doesn’t sound the same as humanly written text.
Pictory is the same. AI can be a wonderful tool for editing videos, but you will have to have a manual review from a human to ensure that the end product is usable.
User Reviews and Feedback
Let’s take a look at what people are saying about Pictory.
On Pictory itself, it has a general rating of 4.8 out of five stars, with users commending Pictory on its excellent customer service and effectiveness. However, that might be a bit biased, so let’s take a look at reviews posted on other sites.
On G2, the overall rating is 4.7 stars out of five, from over 60 reviews. One thing that stood out from reviewers was its ease of use and intuitive interface that was easy to figure out.
Finally, on Capterra, it also has a rating of 4.7 stars. However, some users there pointed out the limitations of Pictory’s AI – for example, it is not trained or effective at recognizing some images.
Conclusion
Overall, I liked Pictory. I love how they are confident enough in their software to give away a free trial without needing to enter a credit card.
The free trial gave me a chance to test out the software and discover its advantages and limitations.
What I would say is as follows. Pictory is an amazing tool that will help you save a lot of time and be more productive.
Nevertheless, since it relies on AI, and AI can be faulty at times, it is important not to rely too much on Pictory’s capabilities. Think of it as an assistant that you are still training.
You can’t rely on it not to make mistakes, so you need a human reviewer to go over the final videos and ensure they flow correctly.
For the price, it is worth it, but do understand the limitations of AI. Once you do, you will be able to use it more effectively.
Pictory will help you boost your SEO campaigns, speed up your YouTube and video marketing campaigns, and get a lot more done in a fraction of the time.
For many people, it’s a lifesaver, so go on and check out the free trial to see the power of Pictory yourself.
