Adobe offers Voice app for videos, storytelling

If you love hearing yourself talk, Adobe wants to put your voice center stage with a new video app.

Adobe Voice is a free app for iPad that produces short videos based on voice recordings, motion graphics and images. It's based on the idea that speaking is key in storytelling or getting a message across.

Voice is designed to be a social media vehicle that can be used by anyone from students to business people. It's billed as being simpler than shooting and editing a video while having more impact than a slide-show presentation.

Targeted at mobile users, the app's animated videos can be viewed on virtually any mobile device.

The human voice is a key part of storytelling due to its ability to convey emotion, according to the app's design philosophy. Users are encouraged to tell a story by recording one line at a time.

That means hitting a virtual button on the iPad, speaking a sentence, choosing an image or icon for that sentence and then repeating the process.

Users are presented with a "wheel" of ideas on how to structure a narrative. They also get a selection of music and over 25,000 graphics images, as well as the ability to add images from the Web or personal photos.

Graphics effects include chalkboard- and watercolor-style themes, real-time motion blur, 3-D and shadows. Credits listing Creative Commons icons and images are automatically added at the end.

When stitched together, the result is a 60- to 90-second video that takes a few minutes to produce thanks to the automated features and coaching, according to Adobe.

"Presentations can be effective -- if everyone you care about is in the same room. But it's really your voice that tells the story," Adobe Voice senior product manager Tom Nguyen wrote in a Twitter interview.

"That makes a personal connection. So a slide deck can't help you tell your story to thousands/millions of people online."

Voice breaks storytelling down into building blocks, so users can experiment with their story one line at a time to see how it plays, he added.

Users of Adobe's Creative Cloud, the server-based application that hosts popular titles such as Photoshop, can tap into their photos and add them to Voice narratives.

While the software maker charges US$29.99 or more per month for Creative Cloud access, it's offering Voice for free from the Apple App Store.

The app requires iPad 2 or higher and iOS 7, as well as a free Adobe ID to publish videos, which can be shared or embedded in Web pages.