Stomp it!

STOMP YOUR TEXT

Kinetic typography is the art of using animated text to tell stories and express ideas in interesting ways. Animated text has always been an important part of Movidmo. Captions displayed with entry and exit effects are essential for the creation of visually interesting video ads and video posts. As we look to expand Movidmo's capabilities in this area, we recently added two new entry effects, Stomp and Nail down, which are staples of motion typography. An excellent example of both of these new effects can be found with the Don't Blink Movidmo template. This video ad template begins with two three word Stomp captions, "DON'T BLINK OR" and "YOU'LL MISS IT!", followed by two three word Nail down captions, "THIS WEEKEND ONLY" and "OUR BIG SALE". Check it out below.

In this blog post, we will cover how to use these two new effects to add a very energetic vibe to your video ads.

It's all about that pace

These entry effects break a caption down into chunks with a roughly equal number of words in each chunk. The Stomp effect displays each chunk one at a time as a fast paced sequence. This effect can be a great way to draw attention to your video ad content. Similarly, the Nail down effect displays the full caption by appending chunks in rapid succession. Like Stomp, it can definitely be a scroll stopper on social media. The swift rhythm used by both of these effects adds a vibrant and engaging feel to video content.

Within Movidmo, users specify a speed associated with an effect. This speed controls how quickly an effect plays itself out over a one second time interval along the Movidmo timeline. For these two new effects, text chunks are displayed approximately every quarter of a second in most cases. At a Fast speed, Movidmo attempts to display a caption as two chunks in the first half second of the interval. In a similar fashion, at Medium speed, up to three chunks are displayed over the opening three quarters of a second, and at Slow speed, up to four chunks are displayed over roughly the entire one second interval. At a Delayed speed, these effects behave like the Fast speed but on the back half of the one second time interval. The only exception to the quarter second pacing is the Ultrafast speed which displays two chunks twice as fast in the first quarter second of the interval.

If there are not enough words in a caption to achieve the above targets, then individual words will be evenly distributed across the time span associated with the effect speed. For example, at a Slow speed, which takes up almost an entire second for the effect, a two word caption will display each word with half a second spacing. All of the effects in the Don't Blink template use three words at a Slow speed. Meaning the spacing between the words is about one third of a second.

Best practices

Below are a few things to keep in mind if you want to make the most of these effects.

• They work best with a small number of words in the caption. In fact, we like them best with one word per chunk. Any more than that and the viewer will have trouble distinguishing what is happening. For the Stomp effect in particular, too many words in the caption means the viewer may not have time to read one set of words before the next chunk is displayed.
• When sizing a caption with the Stomp effect, only the last word chunk of the caption is displayed. All other chunks will fit inside the container when they are displayed. If you want to ensure that all word chunks have the same font size, you will need to size the container appropriately. This often leads to resizing a container so that is wide enough for the longest word in the caption.
• It's not wise to use these effects with too many captions in succession. Viewers may lose concentration if they are forced to watch flashing words appear for more than just a few seconds.
• If you do want to maintain either of these effects across successive captions, use the Slow speed which will provide an equal spacing across the word chunks for each caption. Also select no effect for the captions as they exit to avoid distraction from overlap.
• Be careful having too much ancillary motion in the video background when using these effects. This may be distracting to the viewer and take away from the primary goal of these effects, which is to have the viewer focus on the message provided by the words in the caption.

Do you like these effects?

Use the Contact Us link in the header above to let us know what you think of these new effects. We are committed to helping you produce the best quality video ads, and we always appreciate user feedback.