Authors have number of image and video choices with which to communicate with their readers — Canva, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, — the list grows longer every day. One interesting tool you may not of have heard of is TAWE, a video application from Sparkol. These are the same folks who make VideoScribe — a white-boarding video application.
What is TAWE?
TAWE is a very simple video application that allows you to take an image and zoom, pan, and rotate it while providing a voicevover.
What can you do with TAWE?
Here is a small example I put together using a map from Lady Merreth’s world.
How do create do you create a video with TAWE?
After downloading and installing TAWE you:
- Take a picture of something — map, bookcover, your writing desk, anything at all
- Load the image into TAWE
- Zoom, pan, and/or rotate the image to focus on a desired area
- “Snap a picture” of that area — you can think of this as designating a “slide” or “scene”
- Repeat steps 3 an 4 as many times as desired
- Add narration
TAWE “strings together” the scenes, incorporating the zooms, pans, and rotations into one seamless video.
Videos can be hosted on the Sparkol site, embedded into your website, or downloaded as a video file if you have the pro version. You can then upload that file to YouTube if you want.
What kinds of things can you do with TAWE?
Here’s three ideas I came up with:
- Provide a tour of your writing desk
- Guided explanation of a map of your character’s world
- Book cover reveals
A great thing about TAWE is that you don’t have to use photos. You can create images using any application and import them into TAWE. In my example I used PowerPoint to add the map title. I exported the map and title to a PNG image file which I then brought into TAWE.
Platforms
TAWE is available for PCs, iPads, and Android devices.
Limitations
You can only use one image in a video, and you cannot provide any type of dynamic annotations. For example, you cannot have arrows, circles, or other types of graphic indicators appear (or move) within the TAWE video.
This is not meant as a criticism. In order to be simple to use TAWE has a limited feature set, but with a little imagination you can create videos that are quite engaging.
Cost
You get TAWE for free when you subscribe to the VideoScribe application. This will cost you approximately $144 US a year if you subscribe yearly, or $29US monthly. Because TAWE is an “extra” you can’t just get TAWE by itself.
However, you can download a free trail version of TAWE (though it is not clear in what way the trial version is limited).
So, what do you think of TAWE? Is it something you could use to engage with your readers?
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading and I will see you again soon.
