Animotica is a fun Windows 10 video editing app for your PC

Animotica is an interesting Windows 10 app that enables you to create videos from clips and photos and edit them and add special effects. It has more features than you might expect.

Video editors tend to fall into two categories and there is the serious professional type that can be used for complex video production and there is the fun type. Animotica falls into the latter category and while it is mainly for home users rather than professional productions, it does have a lot of features and it is possible to do some clever things with it.

Create a video project

Create a new project and all of the app’s video editing features are available, but if you just need to trim a video clip, add music, add stickers or text, speed it up or slow it down, you can jump straight to the tool that does that using the buttons on the home screen.

A new project starts with nothing except for a button that prompts you to add one or more videos or photos. These can be loaded from the disk drive or if your computer has a webcam then a live video or photo can be taken.

Video editing tools

Photo and video thumbnails appear in the bottom half of the window and at the top is a preview. Thumbnails can be dragged and dropped to rearrange their order and more content can be added.

Click a video thumbnail and a toolbar at the bottom provides access to split, trim, speed, transform, background, motion, effects, adjust, volume and duplicate functions.

A trick that is easy to do is to split a video before some action and again after the action. Then slow down the clip containing the action so you get a slo-mo effect. You could also duplicate it and run it at normal speed followed by a slo-mo replay.

If you were not holding the phone or camera perfectly horizontal, the transform tools enable the horizon to be tilted to compensate. It could also be used for special effects too. In addition to this there is scale, horizontal and vertical offset adjustment, rotate and flip the video image.

The motion tool is best used with photos to breathe life into them using a Ken Burns effect. Sliders enable you to scale the image, set the horizon, horizontal and vertical offsets of the start and finish. The duration of the photo on the screen can be set too.

The Effects function provides a collection of filters, similar to those in Instagram and they can be applied to videos and photos. They go further and there are mirror effects where it is like a vertical or horizontal mirror on the screen, or even both.

There is a collage effect that places multiple photos or videos on the screen so the video can suddenly transform into a grid of two, four or nine. You can produce some wacky effects using this of the kind seen in some music videos. Some effects can be applied to all clips or just the one you select.

Stickers, text titles and even emoji can be added to videos and some special effects can be applied to them, such as scaling, movement, and fading out. A plain colour can be set too, so you can create start and end titles and credits.

Fix video faults

If the video is not quite perfect, it is possible to make adjustments. For example, there are controls to adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation, exposure, hue, temperature and tint, sharpen, highlights and shadow, vignette and blur. All these tools are common with photo editing, but in Animotica they can be easily applied to videos.

Video output options

When the video is saved, you can choose the size and quality and it ranges from 360p to 1080p (HD resolution) and 24 to 30 frames per second.

If you use the app for free, a ‘Made With Animotica’ notice is added to the corner of the video. It cannot be missed, but if you can put up with it, the app is free.

A small payment (UK £4.19) removes the watermark and enables the bitrate slider so you can adjust the file size and quality. Paying for the Full Pro version (UK £8.39) unlocks extra features, such as 2160p output resolution, which should look great on 4K TVs and monitors and 60 frames/sec.

Conclusion

This video app has more features than most rivals in the fun category. It is not a pro tool, but it is good for everyone else. It is easy to use and you can be creating fantastic videos with special effects in minutes.

The app quit unexpectedly a couple of times, but apart from that it worked fine. It has a good rating in the Store app too. It is definitely one to add to your Windows 10 app collection.

App: Animotica (Microsoft Store)
Price: Free ($9.99 unlocks all features)
By: Mixilab
Size: 82 MB
Verdict: A good video editor for simple fun projects.