Explaindio Video Creator

You may not think this post has a lot to do with MicroController Electronics, however, read on before you formulate an opinion.

There is a new Windows and Mac Video Creator program called Eplaindio that recently became available. I am using it to create training, educational and advertising videos for various projects. It is very powerful yet simple to use.

Basically you can take images, SVG graphics, video backgrounds, optional audio files and create scenes which you put together in sequences to make a video. Additionally, slides created in Adobe Flash can be imported to provide additional animation like capabilities.

I made a sample demo video to demonstrate its potential use (especially in electronics)  which you can view below.

All of the electronic SVG images in the sample demo are from fritzing.org. I took those (~6,500) SVG files (which are distributed under the Creative Commons license) and put them into folders and then created a PNG image for each SVG. (The PNGs are used by Explaindio to present a view of the SVG for selection / inclusion into a ‘sketch’.)  I used Inkscape in non-gui batch mode (-z)  to take the SVGs and save them as  PNG images.  (You can download the python script I used to do that HERE.) Contact me if you want a copy of the Fritzing.org electronics SVG/PNG library for use with Explaindio.

If you are interested in that library you might also be interested in the (~8000) SVG graphic files from OpenClipart.org.The SVGs from there can be freely used commercially. I converted them also into folders (with PNGs) for use in Explaindio. Contact me if you want a copy of that library.

It is interesting to note that the Explaindio project files ([.explaindio] used to create the videos) are XML like. That opens possibilities to generate them ‘programatically’.  For example, when I browse through an SVG library looking for ideas or specific images that I need, I can drag/drop them into a folder with my project/scene creator script (add optional text files for adding text slides) and when done, click on the creator script for it to create the project and/or scenes. It saves me a bit of time. Contact me if you are interested in it. (You’ll need to download and install Python in order to use it.)

All in all, I think Explaindio can be taken advantage of to teach Electronics (and other things).

What do you think? Leave a comment and buy your copy of Explaindio here.