Pictory Release Notes

Pictory Release Notes

April 27, 2022
We are delighted to share new product upgrades which would make your video workflow efficient and save time for you! 
  1. Improved article video experience - In the Article to Video use case, often the original article text can't be used as-is for videos. You can now easily edit the text selected from the article and reorder them even before you reach the storyboard
  2. Turn off auto highlights - You also have an option to turn off the automatic highlighting of keywords in the video text. You may sometimes prefer highlighting the keywords manually. In such scenarios, it was cumbersome to unhighlight all the automatic keywords first and then highlight the new keywords
  3. Turn off auto visual selection - You also get an option to turn off the AI from automatically picking the background visuals for you. In some videos, you may want just text and a plain background color. Or you may like to add one visual for all the scenes. In such use cases, this option would save time
  4.  Decide how much text must appear in each scene - You can now easily do that by either choosing sentence breaks (periods) or line breaks (inserting a new line) or both

March 24, 2022
We're thrilled to announce the launch of two very popular features around text styling. 
  1. Text shadowing - You can now add shadows to your text and select its color and width. This will make your text appear clearly even on transparent or light backgrounds.
  2. A Brand New Video Preview Experience - Easily apply one of nine predefined positions for the video text - Top left, top center, top right etc.
    You can also drag and place the text box at any other custom location.
  3. We have also improved the responsiveness of the storyboard for longer videos.

March 11, 2022
  1. More AI Voices - We've added 29 NEW English AI Voices. You can easily search & filter them based on region and gender.
  2. A Brand New Video Preview Experience - You can now easily move back & forth across scenes to quickly reach and preview the video scene you want. You can use the scroll bar to navigate faster for long videos. We've also optimized the algorithm so what you see in the video preview is EXACTLY what you see in the final downloaded video. This will save you a lot of time as you no longer need to generate and download your videos after every edit.
  3. Faster Video Generation - We've upgraded the rendering engine meaning you can now generate longer videos significantly faster.
  4. Download Videos in Multiple Languages - You can now create videos from text in multiple languages. The automatic visual selection or text-to-speech is not supported yet for non-English languages (coming later), however you can easily add the visuals manually on the storyboard.

Feb 17, 2022
  1. Apply Visuals To All Scenes - You can now apply a stock image/video clip or a personal visual to all scenes in your video in a single go! This will save you a lot of time compared with manually applying the visual to each scene individually. Please check out this short demo video.
  2. We've also squashed a few bugs related to scene duration and B-roll in video editing scenario.


January 14, 2022
  1. Scene Reordering - You can now easily drag and drop the scenes to change the sequence in which they appear in the video. This is available in both video creation and editing scenarios.
  2. Richer text color & background opacity - Now you have more options to set colors for the scene text including Hex and RGB codes. You can also easily change the opacity of the text background color.
  3. Scene duration settings - Edit scene duration just by entering the value. Also, edit scene duration even when voice-over is applied (AI, recorded, uploaded).


January 4, 2022
  1. Remove Silences - On your uploaded videos, you can now remove silences with a click of a button. Simply choose the minimum length of silence to remove and hit Ok. 
  2. Undo Deletion of Specific Filler Words & Silences - Sometimes silences and some filler words are golden. Simply undo the deletion of silences or filler words you wish to preserve
  3. No more sub-scenes  -  We heard you and removed the concept of sub-scenes in the video editing scenario too. Making it much easier to add B-Rolls in your uploaded videos
  4. Faster Way to Edit Captions - Speed up your caption editing by directly editing them on the story pane on the left side of the storyboard
  5. Remove B-Roll Visual - With just a simple click, you can now remove the B-Roll that you have added to any scene in your video
  6. Same B-Roll for Multiple Scenes - Easily extend the same B-Roll visual across multiple scenes by Linking the adjacent scenes


December 16, 2021

  1. Support for Brazilian Portuguese and Dutch language - You can now transcribe, edit, caption, and create short video snippets from long videos in Brazilian Portuguese and Dutch languages.
  2. Highlight keywords in script - When starting from a script, simply highlight keywords you want to influence the AI as it searches for the right visuals.
  3. Faster visual search with recommended keywords - You will now see relevant keywords highlighted for you in the search window. Simply click on a keyword to search our vast visual library.
  4. Split scene - In the text to video scenario, easily split a scene with long text into two scenes with shorter text. The scenes will be automatically linked and will have the same background visual. You can unlink them and add a different visual too!
  5. Edit story text - Speed up your text editing by directly editing it on the story pane on the left side.
  6. Improved voiceover graph - Easily adjust voiceover to entire video by referring to a more accurate audiogram.
  7. Loop background video - For long scenes, you can now choose to loop your background video clips.

December 4, 2021
  • Full control over scenes. We've eliminated the concept of sub-scenes when start from text. Every sentence or new line in your script is now a unique scene.
  • Link Scenes. If you want to use the same visual clip across multiple scenes, now you can simply link the scenes together with the click of a button. Demo here.
  • Improved voiceover synch. Our synchronization algorithm is now improved and will work much better even for longer videos.
  • Improvements in video generation. To generate longer videos faster and also solve the issue where long videos were sometimes getting stuck.
  • Paypal support. You can now subscribe to Pictory using Paypal. 

November 17, 2021
  • Visual search AI improvements. You can save time in your video creation efforts with more meaningful automated visual search results. This algorithm will only continue to get better over time.
  • Full GIF support in visuals. Enhance your videos by uploading GIFs for individual scenes.
  • Subtitle and text file now available in text-to-video scenarios. Whether you start with a blog or a from script, you will now be able to download the SRT, VTT, or TXT file associated with those videos.  Improve the SEO of your videos by uploading these SRT files to YouTube. 
  • Transcribed text file format improvement. When starting with a video, the text file is now available in a much more friendly format for Word and other editors.
  • Unnecessary pauses removed from AI voices. The text-to-speech voice over provided by Pictory had unnecessary pauses between sentences which have now been eliminated. 

October 27, 2021

We are happy to share that we have finished the much-awaited integration of Pictory with Storyblocks and Melod.ie for video clips and music tracks respectively.

Storyblocks and Melod.ie content will now be automatically picked by Pictory AI when you create new videos. You can even manually search using keywords and filter the results. With this upgrade, you would enjoy two key benefits:
  1. Richer, relevant, and contemporary video clips and background music
  2. Faster and efficient video generation 
Be assured that you are 100% protected from copyright notices, takedowns, and third-party monetization attempts. As always reach out to us at support@pictory.ai if you run into any issues. Enjoy the Pictory ride! 


October 21, 2021

We are super excited to announce the release of a new, faster, and sleek text format editor. This editor is a result of the amazing feedback that we've received from you and our continuous focus to simplify your video-creation workflow. 

The new text editor solves several limitations of our previous editor. You can now
  • Adjust text formats at a scene-by-scene level. 'Brand Settings' is now not the only place to change the text fonts, sizes, and colors.
  • Align text to the left, right, or center!
  • If you are happy with the text styles, you can apply them to the entire video.
  • Change the position of text on one scene and apply that position to the entire video.

September 25, 2021

Today we are excited to announce a much-needed capability in the video creation workflow you have asked for.

Scene Duration Adjustment: For the text-to-video scenario with no voice-overs, you can now easily change the timing of each scene from the default 5 second duration. Please find the Scene Duration stepper control on the top right side of the Storyboard screen.

Note that this adjustment is not available when you have a voiceover  since the voiceover duration controls the scene duration. 

As always, we continue to quash other bugs in our journey towards a much better user experience for you.


September 17, 2021

We've been working hard to continuously improve Pictory based on your feedback. We'd like to highlight some of the key improvements that we have enabled recently:
  1. Improved voiceover UX - While we have made some improvements to our voiceover synchronization algorithm, more importantly, we have built a new user interface to help you rapidly make any synchronization adjustments.
     
  2. Improved stock video search results - We’ve made some improvements to our stock video search algorithm, so you should now see more visual options to select from.
     
  3. Ellipses for sub-scenes removed - Long sentences are still split into sub-scenes, but you won’t see the annoying ellipses anymore. 
We also quashed several other bugs in our journey towards a much better user experience for you. Please try and share your feedback.  Stay tuned for many more exciting capabilities in Pictory coming soon.


September 4, 2021

We are very excited to announce the release of our much awaited feature -- automatic synchronization of voice-over with all scenes in the video.

Under the Audio tab, you will now see a new option to apply a voice-over to the entire video. Any uploaded voice-over file or even one recorded with Pictory can be applied to the entire video now.

Our AI will automatically determine the appropriate scene boundaries and synchronize the voice-over. In case the AI synchronization is not accurate, you can easily adjust the scene boundaries by looking at the waveform display. 


August 2021

We are excited to announce a new update of Pictory today with several much-asked-for features. Here is what's included in this new update in addition to the many bugs that we've squashed along the way:
1.  Volume control: Control the volume of music track v/s the voiceover track. Customize your videos more thorough this slider in a new Audio Setting section of the Audio Tab of Pictory.
2.  Text download: Now you can download the text file (in TXT, SRT, or VTT format) of the transcript immediately after the transcription of a video is completed. Save time with this new Download text button on the transcription page.
3.  Adjust number of lines in captions/subtitles: Now you can adjust the maximum number of lines which show the captions on-screen. Simply set the Max number of lines settings on the transcription page to the number of lines desired.
4.  Optimize speed v/s size: Now you can make your video generation go a little bit faster if you are okay with slightly larger sized videos. Find a new setting under the Format tab of the Storyboard screen where the default is set to make the video generation faster.  
In addition to these new features, we have squashed several bugs and made many usability improvements. 


May 2021

We have just upgraded your Pictory with a few major enhancements. These are again based on the wonderful inputs we are getting from marketers and content creators such as you. 
  1. Multiple short videos from one lengthy video - You can now easily select the portions of transcribed text and download them as video snippets. Thus, generate dozens of short videos from one long video such as a webinar, video podcast, customer interview. You can post these videos on social media to amplify the visibility of your video contents. Learn more here
  2. Download videos from transcription text itself - This is perfect when you want to just edit or clean your video without a lot of customizations. You can edit the videos using transcribed text and download the videos at this step itself without going to next step i.e. storyboard
  3. Undo video deletions inline - You can undo your text and video deletions by just clicking the undo icon in the transcribed text itself. You no longer have to guess and click project-level undo multiple times to undo undesired deletions
Stay tuned for another bumper release next week!

April 2021

We are super excited to launch these new capabilities based on our continuous customer engagement. 

 

➡️ Edit videos in multiple languages.  You can now edit videos in Italian, Spanish, German, and French languages. Just indicate the language while uploading your video and Pictory's AI will automatically transcribe the video into that language and add subtitles. You can search the video by searching for text, plus delete sentences and words that you wish to cut out of your final video    


➡️ Detect silences in the video automatically. Pictory now shows silences in the video as a part of the transcript. Easily review and delete any awkward silences in the video just like deleting a word or a sentence   


➡️ Faster video editing and rendering. We have fine-tuned our algorithms to enable you to edit and summarize long videos faster. We now leverage the backend computing power even more to accelerate your overall workflow including video upload, transcription, and final video rendering. 

Additionally, we have fixed a few bugs and improved the UX for editing the video transcription. 


January 2021

We are very excited to announce a brand new use case in Pictory for 2021. 

Pictory now allows you to edit and summarize videos using text. We are trying to make editing videos as easy as editing email in these easy steps. Watch a video demo of this capability. 
  1. Upload the video to edit. As the video is uploaded, Pictory's advanced AI engine transcribes the video and converts it to an accurate text representation where the time stamp for each word is stored internally.

  2. Search and edit the transcribed text to edit the video. Search the video by searching for text on the transcription. Select and delete sentences and words wish to cut out of your final video. Automatically remove filler words like uhs and ums. Edit the transcriptions that will show up as video captions.

  3. Summarize the video to the desired length. Our AI can automatically select a set of summary sentences from the transcription. Easily unselect or select other sentences to include in the summary. 

  4. Add B-Rolls and Customize Brand Settings. Pictory offers over 3 million images or videos that you can choose as B-rolls on any sentence. Pictory allows you to create your own custom brand settings with fonts and color schemes. You can also add your logo and a standard Intro and Outro scene.
In addition to these new features, we have squashed several bugs and made many usability improvements. 


November 2020

We are excited to announce several improvements in Pictory that we made in November 2020.  Here are the new capabilities we added based on our continuous customer conversations.
  1. Video generation is now done in an asynchronous mode.  No need to wait while the video is being generated, you will get notified once it is done.
  2. Output video size is now highly optimized so you don't have to deal with very large MP4 files.
  3. You can now easily add scenes before or after another scene making your storyboard editing easier.
  4. We now support scroll bars throughout the app allowing you to navigate easier. 
In addition to these new features, we have squashed several bugs and made many usability improvements.

August 2020
We are excited to announce several improvements in Pictory that we made in August. Here are some key new capabilities that we’ve added:
  1. Search for similar visuals - Your visuals search experience is simplified further. You can now search for visuals that are similar to an image or video clip you like. Look out for the 'Search Similar' icon on any image on the Visuals tab. This is powered by our new image recognition AI algorithm.
  2. Custom Intro - Under brand settings, like the Outro scene, you can now add a custom Intro scene that will be automatically applied to every video you create. This will help you ensure brand consistency in all your videos.
  3. Improvements in audio search - The AI algorithm that automatically selects the musical audio track based on the mood of your Text content has been improved.  
  4. Multiple aspect ratios - You can now with a single click create Pictory videos in different aspect ratios for different social platforms. In addition to the 16:9 horizontal video, we also now support the 9:16 vertical video, and a 1:1 square video.
  5. Scene Settings Control - You now have more granular control on scene settings where you can choose whether to pan or zoom the scene image or to play voice-over or music on a specific scene. 
  6. Undo - You can now Undo actions while editing the storyboard. 
  7. Search recommendations - Simplify manual search of images with AI-based search recommendations 
In addition to these new features, we have squashed several bugs and made many usability improvements.


September 2020

We are excited to announce several improvements in Pictory that we made in the second half of September.  Here are the new capabilities we added based on our continuous customer conversations.
  1. Custom Voiceover - You can now record your own voice-over for a video or upload a professional voiceover. Look for the new Add Audio button under the scene visual on the Storyboard page. See an example video here. 
  2. Custom Music - You can now upload custom music tracks for your video as well. Check out the new Upload tab in the Audio section. 
  3. Scene Transitions - We now offer many exciting new scene transitions options that you can select from under the Styles section.
  4. Visuals to Video - Check out our brand new use case where you can start directly from your own images or videos and rapidly create a slideshow type video. Simply upload the visuals in the first screen of Pictory and go. You can add text to every scene in the Storyboard step. 
  5. Vimeo Integration - After the video is generated, it is now automatically uploaded as a private video to Vimeo. You can get the URL by clicking on the Share button after the video generation is completed. 
These capabilities were added in the last release in mid-September. 
  1. New scene types - We now support many different kinds of scenes. You can now add (1) a blank scene with a solid or textured background, (2) a text-only scene with a solid or textured background, or (3) a scene with only an image or a video clip, but no text.
  2. Trimming of video clips - You now have a choice to trim any scene video clip to the desired length. This trimming can be done on any of our stock videos or on videos that you import.
  3. Watermarks removed - We have now removed most watermarks from the visuals in the storyboard section as well as in the video preview.
  4. Music fade-out - In the last scene of the video, we've added a fade-out of the music when there is no outro scene.
In addition to these new features, we have squashed several bugs and made many usability improvements.



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