Frequently Asked Questions about Vyond (answered!)

In this post, I'm going to answer the most Frequently Asked Questions about Vyond.

The questions are derived from Google's "People Also Ask", which are frequent searches performed in relation to a given topic.

Here is the list of questions, I want to answer:

Why use Vyond
How long can Vyond videos be? 
Why is Vyond so expensive?
How to make an instructional video in Vyond
How to Zoom in Vyond
How to Mask in Vyond
When will Vyond shut down
Who made Vyond
How to remove the Vyond watermark from videos?
Vyond vs. Powtoon
Vyond vs. VideoScribe

Why use Vyond

Vyond is a video tool that works online by subscribing to one of their paid plans. This gives people around the world the possibility to create high-quality animation videos in a short amount of time.

Vyond has become of the most popular animation makers for several reasons:

1. Vyond offers 3 very professional styles (Business Friendly, Whiteboard Animation, and Contemporary Style), which fits well with the aesthetics of modern businesses.
2. Vyond makes it easy for teams to share video projects, templates, and folders to collaborate and make changes to videos without the hassle of using an external agency or expert-level software like Adobe Suite.
3. Vyond offers an easy-to-learn and easy-to-use interface that looks and works a lot like PowerPoint—a UI most professionals are used to.

To see comparisons between Vyond and other animation makers, I recommend visiting my Youtube channel, where I upload versus-videos regularly.

Why is Vyond so expensive?

Vyond has one of the highest price-points among online animation makers. But, compared to competitors' plans with similar features, they are not much more expensive than other animation tools:

1. $299/year (Essential - 15% off coupon: RUED15)
2. $299/year (Pro)
3. $240/year (Standard)
4. $228/year (Pro)
5. $228/year (Starter)
6. $190/year (Yearly Plan)

If you want to save money on your animation maker, I recommend buying VideoScribe's lifetime deal and stick to the Whiteboard Animation style they offer. 

You'll learn to use their interface and accept that their functionality is limited to a specific number of features. But, many successful Youtubers are using VideoScribe to create videos with millions of views, so it gets the job done.

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a Vyond lifetime deal, so if you want to use Vyond you either have to pay per month or per year.

How to make an instructional video in Vyond

The most efficient way to make instructional content with Vyond is to follow a proven structure that works well for both beginners and experts:

1. Write a strong script that tells your story in a short and entertaining way.
2. Narrate your script as a voice-over to use as a guiding light for the visual side.
3. Animate each scene based on what the voice-over dictates.

This chronology ensures that you know what information you want to put forward before starting the animations. 

A common mistake is to start with the animations, and then narrate your voice-over on top of the scenes after you're done. 

This will distort the timing of each scene, as you may have a lot of animations but few words in one scene. This leads to awkward silence. The opposite example is a very short scene, where you have a lot to say—with no time to say it.

In this perspective, it's much cleaner to use the voice-over as a guideline for your scene durations, so there's a constant flow in the voice-over and visuals. 

Another "mistake" is to storyboard a lot in the beginning. This can give you a better idea of what you want to include in each scene, but it is also time-consuming and often unnecessary. Instead, you can let the voice-over decide what you animate.

Vyond is such an easy tool, and you can almost use it to storyboard directly in the program. I recommend listening back to one sentence of the voice-over and let your imagination decide what compliments what is being said.

To learn more about how to create instructional videos in Vyond, I recommend my elaborate guide on the topic—including script templates and animation examples.

How long can Vyond videos be?

There is no technical limitation to how long a Vyond video can be — in theory, you can make your videos 10 hours long.

But!

After 4-5 minutes, Vyond starts to slow down and becomes a bit clunky to work with. Previews load longer, drag and drops have latency, and all the menus unfold and load slower. 

So, even though you are technically able, it's not recommended to create videos that are longer than a couple of minutes. And this limitation can actually be a helping hand if you think about it differently. 

Because a good explainer video is rarely longer than 2 minutes. If you have to make it longer, you are probably not done with your scriptwriting. If you work harder on simplifying your message, you will not only have a faster Vyond to work with, but you'll also have a stronger, shorter explainer video for your audience to watch.

How to Zoom in Vyond

This is a very concrete question on a Vyond functionality (that I have answered thoroughly in my course, Go Beyond Vyond). 

You zoom in and out of a scene by using Camera Movement, which is a feature located in the top right corner of Vyond Studio. 

This gives you an orange and a yellow square on the canvas, which is the starting and endpoint of your camera movement. 

• To zoom in, you make the yellow end-point smaller than the orange starting point.
• To zoom out, you make the yellow end-point larger than the orange starting point.

Here's an example from my Go Beyond Vyond course, where I show you how to do this step-by-step: 

How to Mask in Vyond

The Mask functionality in Vyond is used to combined two elements into one— e.g. by masking a character with a circle, so the character is cropped in a circular shape.

This can be used for creating windows, conceptual scenes, partial props, and much more. It's a common functionality in a lot of video editing software, and when you get familiar with the Mask feature in Vyond, you will quickly get creative with it.

Here's an example from my Go Beyond Vyond course, where I walk you through the Mask functionality step-by-step: 

When will Vyond shut down

Vyond has no plans of shutting down as a company. Vyond is a healthy business and will continue as going concern many years into the future.

This question might relate to Vyond shutting down their "GoAnimate for Schools" at the end of June, 2019. It seems like an effort to simplify their offerings to fewer products, thus asking schools to purchase regular plans for their education purposes going forward.

Another reason for this question around Vyond shutting down may be the shutdown of the "legacy video maker"—due to the termination of Adobe Flash Player. The Flash-based Legacy video maker was retired on December 15th, 2019 and replaced by the new HTML5-based Vyond Studio.

Who made Vyond

Vyond was founded in 2007 by Alvin Hung. 

Today, the company is run from San Mateo, CA, United States by CEO Gary Lipkowitz. Vyond also has a Hongkong office, where animators and developers are working on improving the global animation platform.

The story behind the founding of Vyond is that Alvin Hung wanted to make an animated video for his wife. This evolved into a desire to create an easy animation tool that anyone can use to create animated stories.

Over the years, GoAnimate has evolved into Vyond with an improved user interface, a better character creator and fewer, better styles to choose from. What started as a hobby tool has grown into an enterprise solution for developing training material, a content engine for creating marketing material and explainer videos, and an education tool used by schools all over the world.

How to remove the Vyond watermark from videos?

With the cheapest plan, Essential, all exported videos include a Vyond logo in the lower-left corner. The easiest way to remove this watermark is to upgrade to the Premium, Professional or Enterprise plan (and you can get 15% off the yearly plans with coupon RUED15).

According to the Vyond Terms of Use, it is prohibited to remove the watermark in any other way than through an upgrade.

Although as it often happens, the internet goes to work to find out how it's possible to remove the watermark without upgrading.

• Use a third-party video tool to position your own logo in the lower-left corner of your video.
• Crop your video in a third-party tool to exclude the bottom/lower part of the frame.

Those are the two options to get a watermark-free video while being on the free trial or Essential plan. 

I can't recommend following any of these methods as you might be suspended from Vyond from doing it. Any attempts at this go against the terms of using Vyond.

"You shall not remove (or attempt to remove) any digital watermark that may appear in any Video." - Vyond Terms

If you want a watermark-free video, you either use another tool or pay for higher plans.

Vyond vs. Powtoon

Powtoon and Vyond offer similar animation makers, and it can be difficult to see the differences. Therefore, this search for comparisons is popular on Google and Youtube. 

I've created a popular comparison video that enables you to choose between Vyond or Powtoon as your go-to animation software tool.  

The conclusions I reach are the following:

• Vyond's Timeline is much better than Powtoon's timeline.
• Powtoon crops videos more easily than Vyond.
• Powtoon's interface is super-fast and often faster than Vyond.
• Vyond makes it easier to control the timing of animations.
• Powtoon has an overload of different styles and templates.
• Vyond has a more professional stroke and style.
• Vyond offers a big variety in terms of character actions.

All in all, I prefer Vyond over any other animation maker on the market right now. But, I will keep an eye on the development on a continuous basis to follow the race.

Vyond vs. VideoScribe

VideoScribe is another contester to the throne in the land of whiteboard animation. I have made a comparison video where I compare Vyond's Whiteboard animation style with VideoScribe's only style; whiteboard animation.

How they compare is shown in this video, where I put both animation makers to the test:

Some of the insights I reach by comparing the two are:

• Vyond has better aesthetics than VideoScribe. Looks more pro.
• VideoScribe has a super accurate and precise pen-stroke for illustrations.
• Vyond offers a more delightful user interface than VideoScribe's heavier UI.
• VideoScribe has automatic camera movement, which saves time.
• Vyond includes many more categories of animations and actions.

As you might have guessed, I prefer Vyond over VideoScribe, but would certainly consider VideoScribe if all I wanted to do was whiteboard animation.

If you have any questions about Vyond, write them in the comment and I'll include them in the post.