Back in April, I reviewed an online video creation tool, Flexclip. I have now discovered a second tool that allows you to create a video in mere minutes: Lumen5.

Lumen5 takes video creation one step further: it can read a web or blog page and create a video on its own, using some impressive AI!

But let’s take it from the top.

Step 1: Choose Your Video Format

When you first register, log in (which you can do using your Facebook account), and choose a plan (any plan), you are taken to a page which shows you various video formats. This is where I had my first indication of how well thought out Lumen5 is. They have taken the most common social media and they give you specific format choices for each of them:

Lumen5 | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's books

Step 2: Choose Your Mode

Once you have picked your format, depending on where you want to publish your video, you are asked to choose how you want to create it. This is crucial. You can start with some text and media of your own, in which case you are basically dealing with another Flexclip.

But you can also start with a link. This intrigued me. What would it do if I pointed it to the page where I describe A Heaven for Toasters on my blog?

Lumen5 | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's books

Step 3: Choose A Theme

It then asks you to choose a theme. This further simplifies the process, as it will apply color combinations which look good on pretty much any blog or social medium.

Lumen5 | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's books

Step 4: Wait…

You then wait for a minute or two, while Lumen5 checks out the link you gave it and creates a video for you.

Lumen5 | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's books

Step 5: Check The Result

This is what I saw next: an automatically generated copy on the left and a storyboard on the right. You can either accept the copy or edit it. I chose to keep it and edit next.

Lumen5 | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's books

Step 6: Edit Your Video

You can edit the automatically created scenes and subscenes. A scene will have a new video or image in the background. With a subscene, the text will change while the same video continues to play.

You can also highlight parts of your text and edit some of its properties, including how long it will be displayed.

Lumen5 | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's books

Step 7: Watch The Video

Here’s what I came up after some 10 minutes of fiddling around with it. This is hardly the best you can do, mind you, but I particularly enjoyed the bread popping out of the toaster! I should stress that Lumen6 chose automatically most of the videos and all I did was edit the text.

You can download the video or share it on social media.

Automatic Creation

I thought I was done with Lumen5. Then, the next day I received an email which informed me that Lumen5 was following my blog and had some suggested videos for me!

I opened the Dashboard and found all of my recent posts there, in the form of suggested videos! Maybe this is a great way of adding video to my blog? I’ll have to think just how that would work out, but it sure is a tempting thought–especially given how easy Lumen5 makes it.

Lumen5 | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's books

Out of curiosity, I checked out one of the videos for my posts. I edited it for no more than a couple of minutes, basically deleting a couple of extra scenes. Here’s the result:

In short, if you wish to find an easy way to insert video into your everyday (social media) life, Lumen5 is well worth checking out!