AI-made Animation VS Live Action Videos – What Works Best on YouTube

What are AI-made videos?

Videos made using AI tools that are built to understand scripts/content/idea, choose the best visuals for the context, put the visuals together and build a great video are what we refer to as AI-made videos. In short, it is like having your own personal video making AI assistant that understands what you want to make and creates it for you to simply review and approve.

How is this helpful for content creators?

-Saves time and resources drastically

-Helps maintain consistency in video content creation by automating a big part of it

-Opens up possibilities to bring varied creative visions alive on video, even without prior experience

There are many popular script-to-video tools out there, each with its own unique strengths, that are suitable for different kinds of video content creators. With Steve, there are several USPs tailored to suit diverse video requirements. And, the most exciting one of the USPs is the animation video creation option!

So, what’s exactly is an animation video and how is it different from a live action video? Well, the simple answer is – think Mr Bean animated cartoon vs Rowan Atkinson! Now choosing between the two delightful Mr Beans may be a task for sure, but when it comes to creating AI creating your videos, it works a little differently.

In animated content, your script is understood by the AI and is transformed into scenes rich with animated characters and backgrounds that tell the story you want to tell. Here, you can swap the characters from a huge library of diverse human and animal animated characters to make the video your own. 

In case of live video content, the AI goes through an extensive library of high-quality live action video footage and choose the right ones in every scene to create a narrative. You can also swap the visuals in any scene that you need and search through the video clips library to bring your own flavour in the scenes.

How do you choose which formats work best on YouTube? That usually depends on what kind of videos you are making. Here is a list of popular video types and what formats work best for each:

Video ads – Animated/Live Action

Yes, both of the formats work. To further zero down, think in terms of what your ad is about. If it is about the look and feel of your product then live action would work best with original product images /clips inserted in the scenes. On the other hand, if you are telling a story of your brand or explaining why your business is the best, animated visuals are likely to convey that in a unique, attention-grabbing manner.

Entertainment videos – Live Action

Videos that are meant to entertain with comedy, stories, or just anything else that you want to say are likely to connect better with the audience when there are live visuals of the people and the characters. The expressions of people in live visuals are more relatable and hence more engaging to the audiences in the case of entertainment videos. Specifically, with AI tools, the range of nuanced emotions that can be conveyed in live visuals is better than with animated content.

Educational videos – Animated

Animated content is instantly attractive and adds an interesting layer to even educational videos on dry subjects. With this format, you can present a lot of information in a very light, interactive, engaging way to the audience and also save a ton of time shooting live visuals!

Shorts/mobile-friendly content – Live Action and Animated

Live action videos are a tad bit more suited to the vertical screen dimensions of mobile phones and hence would carry a little bit of an advantage. However, animated content makes up in terms of visual richness and uniqueness too!

Based on your content strategy, your brand voice and your audience preferences, experiment with both live action and animated videos to really keep your audience on their toes and engage with your content! After all, one of the biggest advantages of AI video making tools is also that they let you experiment creatively while doing the heavy lifting of video production for you!