In today’s digital age, video content has become a dominant force in the world of online communication. Whether you are a content creator, marketer, or just someone who loves sharing videos, the quality and appeal of your videos can make a significant difference in engaging your audience. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful ally in the world of video creation. AI tools have revolutionized the way we produce and edit videos, making the process more efficient and effective. In this article, we will explore five AI tools that can help you create better videos.
Here are 5 AI Tools That Helps You Create Better Videos
Adobe Sensei is Adobe’s AI and machine learning framework integrated into various Adobe Creative Cloud applications, such as Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. Sensei helps video editors streamline their work by automating tasks like audio enhancement, color grading, and even suggesting potential edits. It also offers powerful facial recognition, enabling users to search for specific people within their video library, making content organization much more efficient.
Lumen5 is an AI-powered video creation tool that excels in turning text-based content into engaging video presentations. This tool is particularly useful for content creators, marketers, and educators. Lumen5 uses natural language processing and AI algorithms to analyze your text and generate video clips, animations, and even select suitable music. It’s a time-saver for those who want to create informative and visually appealing videos without extensive video editing skills.
Reevio is another AI-powered video creation platform that empowers users to produce professional-quality videos quickly. It offers a wide range of customizable templates, and its AI technology automatically arranges your content to fit the chosen template. This tool is ideal for marketers and small businesses looking to create promotional videos, explainer videos, or social media content without the need for advanced video editing expertise.
Runway ML is a more advanced AI tool, catering to the needs of creative professionals, artists, and designers. This versatile platform allows users to create interactive and generative video art. It offers features like style transfer, object detection, and even real-time image manipulation. Runway ML opens up a world of artistic possibilities by harnessing the power of AI, making it an excellent choice for those looking to experiment with cutting-edge video effects and visuals.
Magisto is a video editing and marketing platform that incorporates AI to enhance your video production capabilities. It uses AI-driven algorithms to analyze the footage you provide and automatically assembles them into engaging, coherent videos. Magisto also offers customization options, allowing you to fine-tune your video’s style and messaging. This tool is particularly useful for businesses looking to create marketing videos and social media content with minimal effort.
VSDC Video Editor is a versatile video editing software that incorporates AI technology to enhance video quality. It features tools for stabilizing shaky footage, removing background noise, and upscaling low-resolution videos, all with minimal user intervention. This tool is an excellent choice for those who want to improve the quality of their existing videos without investing in high-end equipment or extensive post-production processes.
Conclusion
AI has undeniably transformed the video creation landscape, making it easier and more accessible for people from various backgrounds to produce high-quality videos. Whether you’re a business owner looking to promote your products, a content creator seeking to engage your audience, or an artist experimenting with visual effects, these AI tools offer a wide range of options to cater to your needs.
While these AI tools simplify the video creation process, it’s important to remember that creativity and a human touch are still essential for making truly exceptional videos. AI is a powerful assistant, but it can’t replace the unique perspective and imagination that humans bring to the table. By combining the capabilities of AI tools with your creativity, you can create videos that not only capture the viewer’s attention but also leave a lasting impression in the digital world.
On the 1st of January 2022 the Nigeria’s federal government disclosed that henceforth it would charge offshore companies providing digital services to local customers in Nigeria a six per cent tax on turnover as provided in the 2021 Finance Act.
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, disclosed this during the public presentation and breakdown of the 2022 budget held in Abuja.
Speaking further on the tax on digital services, she explained that it includes apps, high frequency trading, electronic data storage and online advertising, adding that, “this is introducing turnover tax on a fair and reasonable basis.”
The new policy is contained in Section 30 of the Finance Act which amended the provisions of Section 10, 31 and 14 on VAT obligations for non-resident digital companies.
Ahmed said, “Section 30 of the Finance Act designed to amend section 10, 31 and 14 of VAT is in relations to VAT obligations for non-resident digital companies and the mechanism that will be used is to restrict VAT obligations mainly to digital non-resident companies who supply individuals in Nigeria who can’t themselves self-account for VAT.
“So, if you visit Amazon, we are expecting Amazon to add VAT charge to whatever transaction you are paying for. I am using Amazon as an example. We are going to be working with Amazon to be registered as a tax agent for the FIRS.
“So, Amazon will now collect this payment and remit to FIRS and this is in line with global best practices, we have been missing out on this stream of revenue.
According to her, the new law applies to foreign companies that provide digital services such as apps, high-frequency trading, electronic data storage, online and advertising, among others.
She noted that in line with Section 4 of the Finance Act, non-resident companies are now expected to pay tax at six per cent per cent on their turnover.
How Will This New 6% VAT Affect You as A Digital Marketer?
Speaking on this matter is Mr. Taiwo Oyedele according to Mr. Taiwo Oyedele The introduction of the 6% tax on digital services offered to Nigerians by non-resident companies, implies that Nigerians who visit Amazon, and other e-commerce platforms not resident in Nigeria will pay VAT on items purchased online.
Even though it will increase government revenue, it will also have an implication on the transfer of costs to customers, according to Taiwo Oyedele, Fiscal Policy Partner and Africa Tax Leader at PwC who spoke at the Nigerian Economic Outlook 2022 organized by the King’s Court Parish of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), in a webinar themed, “The Finance Act for 2022 – Nigeria Fiscal Guide.”
What You Should Know?
As of 1st January 2022 Facebook introduced the new 7.5% VAT on all digital advertising on it platforms, not just Facebook alone starting from the 1st April 2022 Google will start collect a 7.5% VAT on all on adverts on the Google platform.
So, what does this mean for you as a customer or digital marketer in Nigeria? It means you will have to pay more to place ads or shop on any E-commerce site in Nigeria to bring it home let say you want to advertise a product at 1k daily budget for 30 days which means normally you will be spending 30k for the month but with the new 7.5% VAT digital tax you will need to pay additional 7.5% VAT on the 30k budget you plan to spend on the advert, that automatically means you will be paying 32,250 naira for a 1k daily advert on any social media or digital platform when doing adverts.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, which basically means that it’s a one-of-a-kind digital asset that belongs to you and you only. The most popular NFTs right now include artwork and music, but can also include videos and even tweets.
NFTs can be individual, or they can be part of a collection, which can also allow their owners to feel as though they are joining an exclusive online community. One collection, called the Bored Ape Yacht Club, is made up of 10,000 NFTs that look like drawings of, you guessed it, bored apes. But whoever owns one of them also gets to be part of a new kind of exclusive society, and members (owners of the ape NFTs) include Jimmy Fallon, DJ Khaled, Steph Curry and Post Malone. To own a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, you’ll need to pay at least $200,000.
What is a non-fungible token(NFT)?
In economics, a fungible asset is something with units that can be readily interchanged – like money.
With money, you can swap a £10 note for two £5 notes and it will have the same value.
However, if something is non-fungible, this is impossible – it means it has unique properties so it can’t be interchanged with something else.
It could be a house, or a painting such as the Mona Lisa, which is one of a kind. You can take a photo of the painting or buy a print but there will only ever be one original painting.
NFTs are “one-of-a-kind” assets in the digital world that can be bought and sold like any other piece of property, but which have no tangible form of their own.
The digital tokens can be thought of as certificates of ownership for virtual or physical assets.
Sounds cool right, so, how do I make one?
First, you’ll need a crypto wallet. MetaMask and Coinbase Wallet are two popular crypto wallets, and can be downloaded on your phone or desktop.
After you have your wallet, you’ll need to buy some cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, Ether, or any number of others. You can buy that through a crypto wallet company using U.S. dollars or another fiat currency.
Now, choose what you want to turn into your digital asset—that could be a JPEG, MP3, GIF, or any other multimedia file type that will be uploaded to an NFT marketplace.
Then you’ll “mint” the NFT, which means that you’ll be publishing your token on blockchain, a network that structures and stores cryptocurrency. Many NFTs are stored on the Ethereum blockchain.
You publish an NFT to blockchain via an online marketplace. The most popular online marketplaces to mint and sell NFTs include OpenSea and Rarible. There are usually “gas” fees you have to pay, something that marketplaces charge users for some combination of making, publishing and selling an NFT.
You’re basically paying the marketplaces for the computer power used to fuel transactions on the blockchain. But sometimes these fees can reach hundreds of dollars, so watch out.
You’ll still have to pay a one-time fee to initialize your account on each of those marketplaces, which could cost hundreds of dollars. OpenSea and Rarible will bothcharge a 2.5% fee from your NFT sales, although they are still widely used because they don’tcharge “gas” fees, meaning it’s free to mint the NFT. The buyer pays the minting fee.
Selling an NFT
With all that done, it’s time to actually put your NFT out there and hopefully make some money. On most platforms, doing so is as simple as hitting a button that says “sell” on whatever NFT you have in your wallet.
The screenshot below shows how it works on Rarible using the MetaMask wallet. Note the Ethereum gas fees.
In practically all cases, you have a few options on how you want to sell your NFT. These usually fall into one of three categories: fixed price, timed auction, or unlimited auction—which Rarible calls “open for bids.”
A fixed price is simplest to explain: you put your NFT up at a certain price and you wait for somebody to pay that amount. OpenSea lets you put a time limit on this price if you want, but other than that it’s the same.
A timed auction is also relatively common: in a certain time span, which you can decide, potential buyers will bid on your NFT. When the time limit expires, the highest bidder receives the NFT. An unlimited auction is an auction without a time limit, the seller simply decides when they have received what they think is the best offer and ends the auction.
From here the process runs pretty much automatically: the buyer pays what they’re supposed to for the NFT plus some fees, the creator gets their money minus some fees, and the NFT changes hands. The buyer gets a cool little collectible, and you, the seller, gets the start of a cryptofortune—hopefully.
I’m intrigued. Where do I begin?
If you’re still looking to dip your toes into the world of NFTs, artists who have previously minted their own NFTs advise that you start with something that’s fun and meaningful to you.
“My hopes for the NFT market is for it to become even more accessible for all sorts of creators—artists, musicians, game developers—to be able to share their stories and support themselves on their work,” Amber Vittoria, an artist known for her abstract and colorful NFTs that sell for up to $834,000.
“My advice for folks newly entering the space to sell their creations as NFTs is to not be afraid to ask questions, experiment, and to enjoy the process.”
Another artist named ArinaBB, who has been making NFTs for about a year, added that the rapid evolution of the market can be both “a blessing and a curse,” and that there are some essential safety tips that beginners should be aware of.
“Never click on unknown links even if they seem familiar. Do not download files from strangers,”
‘’Make sure you have a basic understanding of how things work before you start investing large sums of money.”
The sale prices of NFTs are rising as they gain in popularity. Consequently, NFT creators can make a lot of money. However, not all NFTs will even sell, let alone make their creator any money, given all the fees involved with minting and selling NFTs. Due to the costs, you need to prepare for the possibility that you could lose money on your NFT creation. The best way to avoid a loss is to make sure you sell an NFT that others will find valuable and set a minimum price that will more than offset any associated fees.
Does the metaverse already exist in gaming? To some extent, there is already a metaverse in games. But — and it’s an important but — it’s rudimentary.
Some social elements of the metaverse can already be found in video games. Consider Fortnite, an online shooter game played on computers, game consoles and mobile devices. The average Fortnite player spends hundreds of hours in the game with a personal avatar, fighting with and interacting with the avatars of other players. Players also accrue virtual currency that unlocks outfits and other goodies to customize their avatars.
A precursor to the metaverse could also be found in Second Life, an online social platform developed by Linden Lab nearly two decades ago, where people created digital representations of themselves to socialize with others. In the virtual space, users could shop and build property to enrich their virtual lives.
Virtual reality is also somewhat advanced in video games. In 2016, Sony released the $400 PlayStation VR, a virtual reality headset that plugged into its PlayStation 4 console to play virtual reality games. This month, Sony said a second-generation headset was coming for the PlayStation 5, though it did not share a release date.
But those were just steppingstones toward the complete metaverse, which is still taking shape. Technologists say that thanks to a number of things — fast internet connections, powerful virtual reality headsets and a large audience of gamers — it is now more possible to live in a richly animated, lifelike 3-D simulation.
What Will Power the Metaverse?
The metaverse will be driven by diverse forms of technology such as cloud infrastructure, software tools, platforms, applications, user-generated content, and hardware. In addition to the technical requirements, the metaverse will include various user experiences including, but not limited to, entertainment, gaming, commerce, social interactions, education, and research.
What are some examples of metaverse?
Here’s a look at what’s happening today that could lead to the metaverse of tomorrow:
♦ Meta. The tech giant formerly known as Facebook has already made significant investments in virtual reality, including the 2014 acquisition of Oculus. Meta envisions a virtual world where digital avatars connect through work, travel or entertainment using VR headsets. Zuckerberg has been bullish on the metaverse, believing it could replace the internet as we know it. “The next platform and medium will be even more immersive and embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it, and we call this the metaverse,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month after revealing the company’s rebranding.
♦ Microsoft. The software giant already uses holograms and is developing mixed and extended reality (XR) applications with its Microsoft Mesh platform, which combine the real world with augmented reality and virtual reality. Earlier this month, Microsoft showed off its plans for bringing mixed-reality including holograms and virtual avatars to Microsoft Teams in 2022. Also in the works for next year: explorable 3D virtual connected spaces for retail and workplaces. The U.S. Army is currently working with Microsoft on an augmented reality Hololens 2 headset for soldiers to train, rehearse and fight in. Beyond that, Xbox Live already connects millions of video game players across the globe, too.
♦ Epic Games. Tim Sweeney, CEO of the company that developed Fortnite, has said, “It’s no secret that Epic is invested in building the metaverse.” It’s held concerts by the likes of Ariana Grande and Travis Scott, movie trailers and music debuts and even an “immersive” re-imagining of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 historic “I Have A Dream” speech. And it’s developing photorealistic digital humans with its MetaHuman Creator, which could be how you customize your digital doppelganger in future open-world games.
♦ Roblox. The platform, founded in 2004, houses scores of user-generated games, including role-playing offerings like Bloxburg and Brookhaven, where users can build homes, work and play out scenarios. Roblox is now valued at more than $45 billion after going public this year. the On the day of its IPO in March, Roblox founder and CEO David Baszucki tweeted a thank you to all who helped bring the platform “one step closer to fulfilling our vision of the #Metaverse.” Since then, Roblox has teamed up with skateboarding shoe company Vans to create Vans World, a virtual skateboarding park where players can dress up in fresh Vans gear and opened a limited Gucci Garden, where you can try and buy clothing and accessories for your virtual self.
♦ Minecraft. Another virtual universe beloved by kids, the Microsoft-owned Minecraft is essentially the digital equivalent of Legos, where players can create their own digital character and build whatever they desire. As of August, Minecraft boasts more than 140 million monthly active users. During the pandemic, it has exploded in popularity among kids who had to rely more heavily on virtual connections.
Some lesser-known companies have launched their own online worlds. The online fantasy world Second Life, founded in 2003, is in its second decade as an alternate reality.
When Will the Metaverse Arrive?
The question is then, how long will it take before we move from various protometaverses toward the grand metaverse? Mark Zuckerberg believes that it will be by the end of the decade, but it could also be much sooner than that because foundational elements are already in place.
The infrastructure behind today’s internet allows massive quantities of people to gather in virtual environments, like when more than 12.3 million players tuned in for a VR concert in Fortnite featuring Travis Scott. This current infrastructure is very impressive, yet it will likely need to evolve further to support the metaverse industry experts envision.
We also have the hardware to render realistic virtual environments and avatars in 3D. Meta owns the leading producer of virtual reality headsets, Oculus. Microsoft has been supporting various enterprise use cases with its HoloLens mixed reality smart glasses since its first release in 2016. In addition, Apple is rumored to release its AR and VR headsets in 2022. HTC, Pico, MagicLeap, and other manufacturers are rapidly advancing various hardware platforms, while cascade technology architectures are shifting various computational loads across back-end server infrastructures to edge devices. Unity’s Furioos is a prime example of streaming fully interactive real-time 3D environments where the heavy lift of rendering the environments is handled by their automatically scaling GPU server infrastructure. The metaverse will be a ubiquitous computing experience where users can leverage traditional devices like computers and mobile devices while also enhancing the experience with emerging immersive AR and VR wearables.
Conclusion
Finally, the same innovative technologies that have been disrupting the financial services industry since the Bitcoin network came into existence in January 2009 can be used to enable the continuity of data in the metaverse. NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, are an excellent example of how blockchain technology can be used to verify the ownership of digital assets, and there are already 3D virtual reality platforms that take advantage of them.
Marc Petit, vice president and general manager of Unreal Engine at EPIC Games, stated in an interview recently that the metaverse will require, “shared virtual worlds that incorporate persistence.” What this means is that for an ideal customer experience a user should be able to move from universe to universe with their digital belongings. An example of this would be a user’s NFT shoes purchased from Nike in the future will be available for avatar use in Meta’s Horizon platform while also in other virtual worlds like those in Fortnite and Minecraft.
Another example, Decentraland, is a fully decentralized world that doesn’t have any central leadership. The world is based on the Ethereum blockchain, and it’s controlled by a decentralized autonomous organization. Through this organization and voting, players can control the policies that determine how the world behaves. Decentraland also has its decentralized currency, MANA, which can be exchanged on cryptocurrency exchanges for other currencies.
In the future, Decentraland could be one of many decentralized worlds that make up a portion of the metaverse, with digital assets and currencies flowing between them the same way fiat money and physical goods are exchanged by people living in different countries in the real world.
While nobody would own the metaverse itself—just like nobody owns the internet today—there will certainly be many important players in the space, and companies like Meta, Microsoft, Unity, Epic Games, Roblox, and others want to be among them, which is why they are pouring billions of dollars into making the sci-fi dream come true.
The metaverse is just an idea that was first described by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash. Soon, it could become reality because many large technology companies are betting that it will be as big—if not bigger—than the internet is today. Anyone who doesn’t want to wait for individual virtual experiences to form one massive world of worlds can join platforms like Decentraland, Horizon Workrooms, or Roblox to get at least some idea of what the future will possibly look like.
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What is metaverse? The word metaverse has been a hot topic of conversation recently, with Facebook and Microsoft both staking claims. But what is the metaverse? And when will it get here? That what everyone wants to know.
Let’s do a little deep dive into the idea of metaverse, to get an idea on how it all started. The term metaverse can be traced back to Neal Stephenson and his dystopian cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. The novel was released in 1992, and it’s considered a canon of the genre, along with William Gibson’s Neuromancer, which describes a virtual reality dataspace called the matrix.
The metaverse in Snow Crash is a 3D virtual reality space accessed through personal terminals and virtual reality goggles that have a lot in common with the Oculus Quest and other VR headsets. This 3D space appears to its users as an urban environment created along a single hundred-meter-wide road, the Street. Stephenson writes:
Like any place in Reality, the Street is subject to development. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off of the main one. They can build buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as vast hovering overhead light shows, special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored, and free-combat zones where people can go to kill each other.
If Stephenson’s vision of the metaverse seems familiar, it’s because massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs, or more commonly, MMOs) share many of its properties. In Second Life (released in 2003), for example, users can customize realistic avatars, meet with other players, create virtual items, own virtual property, and exchange goods and services.
Virtual experiences like Second Life can be described as protometaverses. Why the prefix? Because they exist in isolation, each being a digital island whose inhabitants and their virtual assets never leave it. The metaverse Mark Zuckerberg wants to create isn’t some grand virtual experience—it’s the next version of the internet.
“We’ve gone from desktop to web to mobile; from text to photos to video. But this isn’t the end of the line,” writes Zuckerberg in a recent letter to his employees. “The next platform will be even more immersive—an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.”
So, what exactly is metaverse?
The metaverse is the convergence of two ideas that have been around for many years: virtual reality and a digital second life.
For decades, technologists have dreamed of an era when our virtual lives play as important a role as our physical realities. In theory, we would spend lots of time interacting with our friends and colleagues in virtual space. As a result, we would spend money there, too, on outfits and objects for our digital avatars.
In what techies like Mr. Zuckerberg call the metaverse, virtual reality serves as a computing platform for living a second life online. In virtual reality, you wear a headset that immerses you in a 3-D environment. You carry motion-sensing controllers to interact with virtual objects and use a microphone to communicate with others.
According to Mr. Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist who has written extensively about the topic, said the metaverse represented the fourth wave to computers, following mainframe computing, personal computing and mobile computing.
“It’s moving into what people call ambient computing,” he said about the metaverse. “It’s about being within the computer rather than accessing the computer. It’s about being always online rather than always having access to an online world.”
To put it in a simple term: It’s you and your avatar interacting with others in a digital environment?
