I've Begun Experimenting with Canva's AI

I've had a Canva Pro subscription for a long time, yet I'm still amazed to learn about its capabilities. Every time I ask Google if there's a free app to do (whatever), Canva is one of the options it lists. So far this year I learned that it can create a banner for my website, do book cover mockups, design photo collages (again for my website), make decent avatars and a logo to use as my website's favicon, and now AI-created video.

I probably would never bother to make a book trailer for Running From Herself from scratch, primarily because it's a tedious task, and secondly, because its only function would be to add content to my website. Now that I know about Canva's video capabilities, however, I'm willing to give it a try.

My recent exploration of AI-generated character art resulted in a range of very negative to pretty positive results (Copilot versus Whisk), but like with everything there was a bit of a learning curve, and video is going to present a much wider curve, I fear. By the way, Canva also does AI character art, except there's a catch. Subscribers need to use "credits", which can dissipate awfully fast, especially for someone like me who had close to fifty images created using Whisk. (I've only used about sixteen of them to date, and likely won't ever use most of them.)

There are YouTube videos out there that purport to explain Canva's book trailer process. This is one that I've saved, but haven't watched yet. Here is another. It was YouTube, in fact, that clued me into Canva's AI video capabilities, when a random video popped up in my queue. That one only addressed the video aspect briefly, but it was enough to intrigue me.

I decided to try it out with one single clip as a test. I clicked on AI and asked it to create a video with the camera panning in on a woman in her thirties with mid-length curly blonde hair. She's sitting on a backless stool on a dark bandstand, with a single spotlight glowing on her. She's dressed in a light blue jewel-neck sweater and dark pants and is holding a microphone, singing a mournful song. In the background is the silhouette of three band members ~ two guitarists and a drummer. I asked it to add appropriate music.

Its first attempt had her singing some atrocious lines accompanied by a piano. I "patiently" explained that there is no piano in the band. I also asked AI to shorten the woman's hair, something it was apparently unable to do. I also informed it that the lyrics were, in my words, "all wrong". Canva's second try at music was passable. I actually have my own lyrics I'd prefer to use, but I doubt AI possesses the ability to incorporate them, and I didn't want to waste my credits by asking for more do-overs.

I accepted the second iteration, and here's how it looks:

I don't hate it. It's, in fact, pretty good. But one clip is far different from an entire book trailer. So, I'll watch the YouTube videos and try to get a good handle on the process before depleting my monthly credits. I'll also need to write a script for it.

While I'll never pay for a book trailer, since I'm already paying for Canva, if it works, awesome. 

More to come.