Vont: Canva for Video Alternative that Lets You Easily Add Custom Text to Videos (iOS)

Not everyone has the time and skill to generate a simple 2-3 minutes social video for Facebook or Instagram. Stitching your video clips and adding music can be all easy to achieve on iOS, but adding styled, custom text? It can be bloody difficult feat especially for a non-techie person who easily gets intimidated by video editing apps.

iOS' built-in video editing app iMovie doesn't make the cut either. Their “Add Text” overlay functionality is just plain boring, unusable. iMovie is decent enough in combining your clips with nice transitions and custom audio background but not in adding custom styled text.

The hunt for Canva for video

I had this interesting challenge last week where I needed to add a few texts to my travel videos. And me being a non-multimedia person, I'd rather do it straight on my iPhone and totally skip the headache of editing them with Adobe Premier or Quik, which for me are all complicated to use.

With that said, I had to check out and try nearly almost all video editing apps on iOS that allow me to add a text overlay for my videos. Some are very promising but one app that really stood out: Vont.

What is Vont?

Vont, currently available on iOS, lets you add highly customizable text overlays to videos. You have the flexibility to choose your own font or use Vont's font collections, change font sizes and colors. And the best part? It lets you insert multiple text overlays to any given video timeframe.

New AI-Powered Apps Help You Generate Captions, Hashtags for Instagram

And the fun doesn't stop there. Vont also lets you add transitions to each text overlay, giving you full control how you want your text enters the viewport.

Here's Vont in action:

It's easy to imagine Vont as Canva for videos. First off, Vont interface is so neat and it's a delight to use, almost similar to Canva.

For the uninitiated, Canva is a must-have app that lets you create professional-looking photos and banners for all your social media needs. Its suite of pre-made layouts makes it easy to create graphics, cards, flyers, invitations, and posters straight from your iPhone or iPad.

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The true strength of Canva lies in its ability to let anyone — with or without design experience — generate professional-looking visuals for their marketing needs.

Now, if you're looking for Canva for video alternative offering the same editing experience, then, you've got to check out Vont.

New AI-Powered Apps Help You Generate Captions, Hashtags for Instagram

Whether you're using Instagram for business or not, writing a killer caption and well-optimized hashtags is a must. Ask any Instagram marketer it's second most tricky part immediately next to generating the visuals to post on Instagram.

A good caption should drive user engagements and virality, while a relevant set of hashtags ensures you have the most optimal reach to get the exposure you need. People discover interesting posts thru hashtags, and it's a good opportunity for your brand to get discovered and ultimately earn followers.

While the best way to come up with words to accompany your Instagram post is to write it yourself, it doesn't hurt to try and get some assistance from new breed of apps to do just that.

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In this post, we'll be featuring an Android and iOS app that should help you decide what captions to post next.

Caption AI - Your Smart Instagram Caption Assistant ()

Caption AI currently hosts 15,000 captions (and growing) grouped into easy to navigate categories. Running out of caption idea for your next Instagram post? Just launch the app, open an image to post and Caption AI will automatically detect what caption and hashtags to post based on your picture.

Not happy with the generated caption? Just tap on any of the categories like Nature, Fitness, Travel, and Caption AI automatically suggests a caption for you.

Of course the auto-generated captions aren't original. They're mostly coming from third-party sources that curate popular lines and quotes from notable people and writers. Perhaps in the next update the developer gives proper attribution to each line.

This Android app can also suggest the most popular hashtags relevant to your post. So next time you're stuck deciding what to post, check out this app.

Auto Caption - Get Caption Ideas for Instagram (, )

Another app that I am pretty much impressed is Auto Caption for iOS. The moment you open a photo to post, it automatically detects whether it's ocean, mountain or food. Auto Caption will then suggest a caption and hashtags based on what it sees.

It's pretty clever and helpful app ideally recommended for Instagram marketers or casual Instagrammers.

Wrapping it up

Again, the above-mentioned apps aren't for everyone. A more personalized and well-thought out captions will still do wonders in your Instagram marketing efforts. But if doing so takes you forever, then, maybe time to explore those apps?

Slide.ly: Turn Your Instagram, Flickr & Facebook Photos Into Stunning Video Slideshows

Back in the good ‘ol days, Scribd and Slideshare allowed you to host your PowerPoint photo presentations. These sites were very popular at that time. The problem is, you can’t use these sites to create new slideshows from the beginning.

There is also Prezi, Zoho, Microsoft Office web apps, and even Google Docs that are advanced resources you can utilize to create online presentations. However, none of these allows you to create simple slideshows as quickly and easily.

Create Video Slideshows From Facebook, Instagram Photos With Slidely (link)

Now, meet Slide.ly, it's a new web app that makes it easy to create photo slideshows from Picassa web albums, Instagram photos, Google Images, Flickr photos, and Facebook albums. Slide.ly also allows you to upload pictures from your own desktop and puts them together into a musical slideshow of your own production and making. You can simply pull images and photos from shared multiple social sites you share with others and just pick out the specific photos you like to create your very own photo album or photo slideshow.

Slide.ly can even be used for office or class presentations so long as there’s an internet connection available.

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Using Slide.ly is a snap. First you need login using your Slide.ly or Facebook account HERE. Once logged in, Slide.ly should bring you this:

Here you can select an album and individually select those photos you want to be added in your Slide.ly. You may also remove and re-arrange the selected photos, and instruct Slide.ly to randomly select the photos to be displayed by simply toggling the "Shuffle" button, as seen below:

Now, hit "Preview and Save Slidely" button, until Slide.ly bring you this:

From here you can select a track as music background for your Slide.ly. You can pick up from YouTube, SoundCloud, and you can even upload your own track. You can even choose from the thousands of free tracks from Slide.ly itself for your gallery, theme, or audio background.

Now it's time to add some effects. Just select any of the nine transition effects found in the upper right, as seen  here:

One unique feature of Slide.ly is that you can add pictures from any of your friend’s Facebook albums. Just make sure the privacy settings of the album or specific pictures are set to public or have been shared to you in the past.

Here's a Slide.ly presentation I created for the legendary Filipino rock band "Eraserheads":