Adobe just released a pretty cool video tool, Adobe Voice. The tool (just on the iPad right now) lets you create quick slide-type videos with voiceover. While it’s not as professional as PowToon, it’s  much easier and 100% free. I wish you could publish the videos to YouTube or download them, but right now you can’t.
A few tips:
- Use their library
I love the cool icons and symbols available in their library. The trick is to keep your search very simple and just scroll through the pages of icons. For example, searching for “happy” will give you a lot more to choose from than if you search for “smiling face.” - Keep slides to 3-5 seconds
My first draft had slides that were 10 seconds long, and that’s too slow for this kind of video. Your audience wants things to move faster. Say half of what you want to say on one slide, then add a second slide and finish your thought. - Go with the flow
I think the app is a little buggy right now. After I worked for a couple of minutes, the preview pictures on the slide navigation bar disappeared, so everything was just a blank slide. The content was still there, but I just couldn’t see the preview to navigate. - Get the sound right
It was insanely easy to record the audio for each slide. Once I finished the basic structure, I went back and fixed the audio on each slide. I put more energy into each one, and I also made sure that I talked at the same level and angle to make the sound from slide to slide more consistent. Of course, I was in the bathtub when I made it, so the audio has a little echo and a couple of splashing noises. But it’s pretty good.
Here’s what I was able to do in about an hour. Now that I know the tool, I bet new videos would take me half the time or less.