Will’s Monthly Platform Update - March 2021

This month we focused on significantly speeding up the platform.

Aside from this, we also added the top two features power users have been asking for, all while fixing bugs reported by our users in <12 hours on average. 

1. Speedup!

• Generation time. As we added more powerful capabilities for video ad generation over the last few months - such as automatically extracting soundbites from UGC - the time taken for ads to generate slowed down. For some users with high resolution assets or complex briefs, this meant generation could sometimes take 2-5x longer than the normal 3 minutes per batch of 3 concepts. We’ve done some clever optimization work to get us back on track.
• Export time. Rendering lots of videos in the browser is not particularly easy. Historically it’s taken up to 30 minutes to provide you with your downloads depending on how many video ads you’re exporting. This process now takes only a few minutes because we’re working with a superior rendering engine, and because we’re rendering videos before you even choose to export them, so they’re ready when you are.
• “Snappiness”. This is the fun one, and includes loading time between screens, loading time before playback, loading time when saving changes and generally navigating around the platform. This was a big problem for some users who uploaded very hi-res images and videos. To solve this we now automatically compress all your uploaded creative assets and work with them in low-res, and then swap them for the hi-res versions when you export. Best of both worlds!

2. Exact scene swapping.

Although Pencil automatically detects and cuts up the scenes in your uploaded video, most users found that when they wanted to make edits there were too many little scenes to choose from. Now, you can easily specify which exact scene from a source video you want to swap into your ads without having to wade through a giant list. 

3. Add audio.

We’ve always automatically applied music from your uploaded videos to your generated ads to maximize ease and minimize time. We’ve even lowered the volume on the music when someone’s speaking to generate effortless new video ads from UGC. But what if you want to add your own music? Now you can directly upload your own audio tracks in the editor, and use them in your ads in just 1 click.

We are super excited by these latest features and hope you find them useful in scaling your Q1 campaigns. If you’d like to try it out, sign up for a free trial to get started.

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And please keep letting us know what else you need in 2021!