3 cutting-edge advancements in video production technology

Hello, fellow humans! Remember me? I’m JB, your friendly neighborhood video guy. Since I’ve invested so much time and money (and blood and sweat and tears) into making video my career, I’ve been keeping a very close eye on the new trends coming into the video production/motion graphics realm.

It’s a very exciting time for technology right now. With all the advancements in artificial intelligence, any idea that pops into your head can become real in a matter of minutes. It’s not perfect… yet, but it’s fun to see what’s possible, and the next few years will show how useful AI tools will really become. There are a lot of amazing advancements in the realm of video production for 2023 and into 2024, so let’s hop into a few of them!

1. Generative AI (GenAI)

The release of generative AI tools for writing, design, and video has very quickly changed the landscape of the industry. With tools like Midjourney, ChatGPT, and Adobe Firefly, you can simply type a text prompt and sit back to see what it creates in just a few seconds.

But after using these tools a few times, you begin to see quite a few shortcomings. Images can come out a little “half-baked,” faces can have multiple mouths, sharks might have human hands, and hands might even have eight fingers. So, while AI can create these images in seconds, they require a lot of fine tuning to get a usable asset.

On top of that, there is the little issue of copyright infringement. Many generative AI tools are trained with a dataset that contains things that already exist on the internet, meaning that the results may contain pieces of existing assets protected under copyright law. And figuring out exactly what assets that AI used to pull together that final product can be near impossible.

We also aren’t sure how exactly these tools will be regulated. There has already been a lot of outrage about these tools being used in certain industries, where the training data comes from, privacy issues, and more. It is too early to know quite how things will shake out. There are already talks of laws and regulations, and I don’t know much about that. But I do know one thing: AI-generated videos can be nightmare fuel.

Some people are working with AI to produce less monstrous creations. For example, if you’re a fan of memes, you might have already seen the uncomfortable but hilarious Harry Potter–Balenciaga videos:

2. AI voice printing (voiceovers)

Another interesting use of AI in video is for voiceover. There are now tools that can take text from a page and produce a realistic narration in many different tones, styles, accents, and voices using tools like Speechify and Voicemod.

As you can see from their website, Speechify is not quite perfect and will require some fine tuning to cut out awkward pauses and tighten up the pacing. But for what it is, and how quickly it can crank out a voiceover, it is an extremely powerful and time-saving tool.

There is also real-time voice printing in some tools that will take your voice that is going into a microphone and change it in real time to another voice completely. For example, with Voicemod, you can read a script yourself and come out sounding like Morgan Freeman. Very smooth.

But again, there are those pesky copyright issues, especially if you use a celebrity’s voice offered in some of those AI tools, and even more so if you plan to monetize the result. There are different laws and regulations in the works for utilizing these tools in the creative space.

3. Unreal Engine 5 (real-time rendering)

Some of the most exciting advancements in video production have come from 3D, and we’re super excited about the possibilities we’re seeing in the space. With the advent of real-time rendering, Unreal Engine 5 has carved out quite the niche in 3D video. To understand how impactful this change can be, you have to understand how previous workflows have worked.

Except for the past few years, 3D assets or scenes typically had to be built in a low-resolution workspace because of the burden that rendering places on processors and graphics cards. But working in low-res means that the textures, colors, lighting, and animations don’t appear like they would in the finished product. To make sure the work is progressing correctly, every so often, the video team would have to do a quick render or “play blast.”

With the introduction of real-time rendering, this is no longer a problem. You can see in real time how the final product will appear. (Or at least pretty dang close.)

Unreal Engine 5 has been a huge leader in this space.

It was originally built as a game-design engine for the Unreal series of first-person shooters, but the video production industry has also found it extremely powerful for creating 3D animations. (It was used in the “live action” version of Disney’s The Lion King.)

Unreal Engine is very powerful when it comes to creating 3D environments. And if it can create lush forest jungles, expansive deserts, and rolling mountains in almost picture-perfect rendering in real time, it’s easy to imagine the possibilities for explainer videos.

The prospects are exciting, and a bit scary.

I mean, who thought we would be around to see the beginning of Skynet? But while these tools are extremely powerful and quick to crank out a product, it might not be time to use them for public-facing projects. But they are perfect for ideation, concept development, and mood boarding. They can save a ton of preparation time, and they’re a great way to fill a blank page and give a good jumping-off point.   

There’s simply no denying that these tools can enhance marketing efforts when used correctly. Hopefully by the time our robot overlords are ready to replace me, I’ll be long retired. Until then, I’ll keep on keeping on…