Today Im doing a 100% honest review of the new Video Skins software.

First though I want to apologize for not having a demo video. Normally I make a video review to go with my text review but for this one I did not. The reason I did not is that right now its about 92 degrees outside in North Eastern PA where I live with 80% humidity. To put it bluntly its hot, and I just cant sit in my home office for an hour with the central air off to make a video. I tried making one with the air on but the noise kept ruining the video. So because of the lack of a video review I will try hard to be extra thorough with the text review.

Ok so as you probably guessed Video Skins is a software that lets you put a ‘skin’ over your preexisting videos. But what exactly is a ‘skin’ and more importantly how can it help you? Well a skin is any type of functionality. That shows over the video. These can be things like optin forms, social share buttons, call to action buttons, PayPal buttons and more. I will explain each of these features in this review and also cover the pro’s and con’s of each one.

The first thing I looked for when I logged into the software was the tutorials. A big pet peeve of mine is when a software does not have tutorials or a way to contact support built right into it. Video Skins has both. There is contact form and there are a ton of video tutorials.

However I will admit that once I found the tutorials, was satisfied that they where there in case I needed them, I did what most people will probably do. I completely ignored them and jumped right into the software.

In order to get started you need to click ‘create new’. You are then asked to select where your video is hosted as well as a video name. There are a couple of other optional settings that are not really that important as well.

Video Skins integrates with YouTube, Amazon S3, or you can enter your own embed code. Given that they have multiple options I was a little surprised to see that they did not include Vimeo so I decided to test with Vimeo’s embed code. With the exception of the unimportant custom control bar and custom play button all of the Video Skins functions worked correctly when using Vimeo.

For my main test I used a YouTube video.

After entering the initial video you are presented with a number of premade skins to get started with. Or you can make your own from scratch.

I chose to create my own from scratch and was then taken to the main editor.

This is the heart of the software. The place where you add your own custom functionality to the video. Its also the place where you will spend the majority of your time when using this software. You can add several different types of things over your video. In order to add a specific functionality simply left click on its widget / icon on the left and drag it into the video to where you want it located. After you drop it into the video you can then edit that widgets settings or reposition it if you like (its fully drag and drop)

Lets cover each of the widgets one at a time, I tested them all and noticed good and bad things about each. Please note that you can have any or all of the widgets over your video but you cant not have multiple copies of each one. You can also select the start / stop time for each widget or have it show for the entire video.

First the ones that I personally did not care to much about.

Custom Image: This allows you to put your own custom image over the video. While this is nice , its really not that important in my mind. I guess you can have an image that is designed to make people more likely to click play, but really you should be making people ready and wanting to watch your video before they even get to your site.

Play Button: Put your own custom play button over the video. This really does not make any sense unless you have a custom image over. In fact the only time you will really use this is if you have a custom image.

Play Bar: This one lets you put your own custom play bar over the video. A play bar is where people can fast forward / rewind  /play / pause / and see the video counter. There is nothing wrong with them having that, but really a custom play bar is not going to make anyone any money so really who cares.

Text: Video Skins lets you put your own custom text over the video. This is fully customizable allowing you to select the text position, color, font, and into animation (most of the widgets allow you to enter a intro animation actually)  but honestly in my experience text is difficult to see or read over a video, also its not clickable or anything so really this did not excite me.

Now for the ones that I did think are useful

Button: You can add clickable buttons over the video. Buttons like this are going to be great for linking to affiliate products or CPA offers and are going to be a good way to use your video to warm up traffic and then send them over to your target URL. These buttons are not graphics, they are actual buttons, so you can fully edit the text in them.

Since you can add your own text to the buttons I wanted to see if it would handle non English languages well. Specifically I was interested in if could handle non standard characters. So I went over to Google translate and translated “This is my button” into Finnish “Tämä on minun painike”, I made sure that I put the translated text into notepad first to remove any character encoding. This is what I got when I saved the button:

As you can see Video Skins seems to have problems handling non standard text characters. I tried several other languages and got similar results for each one. Because of this Im going to say that the button option is best if your using a language that does not have special characters.

Optin Form: This is a feature that I really liked. By adding a optin form over your video you can basically turn your video into a squeeze page and use your video to build your list. We should all know by now that list building is the one thing that you absolute need to be doing.

The option form comes in two different styles. The first is a form that only covers the lower third of your video and will continue to show as your video plays. The second, which I show in the graphic below is the kind that pauses the video and displays until either the user optins or clicks to close the form and continue the video.

The form is super customizable allowing you to edit every single aspect of it. You can enter your own heading, text, and button text as well as its opacity. You can set the background color an opacity as well if you like. Video Skins integrates with Aweber, Infusion Soft, Send Reach, ImnicaMail, MailChimp, IContact and Get Response. I thought the optin integration was very well done and a great feature.

Count Down Timer: Adding a countdown timer is a great way to get people to take action. This is something that has been proven time and time again. When you add a countdown timer it adds scarcity and quite frankly scarcity sells. Video Skins allows you to enter a fully customizable countdown time.

There are five different counter styles and it works very well however I did notice a couple of quirks about this feature. First unlike all of the other widgets there is no live preview in the editor. Instead it only shows a place holder graphic. Second if you add custom text above the countdown timer the text is constrained to the width of the timer.

This is not really a bug. Just a personal preference I guess. I would have liked to see the text go wide and have the countdown timer centered under the wider text. But as I said thats just my preference and honestly most people wont need to enter custom text anyway. For most applications you will just have a timer alone in the corner or something to add scarcity to the context of your video.  Over all I really like this feature and thought it was a great addition to Video Skins.

PayPal: You can add a PayPal button over your video. This is going to be good for anyone who is selling a physical product or for a charity looking to get donations. However honestly I thought this particular feature was not done so well.

First of all you only have 4 button styles to choose from and you cant upload your own. Second of all this does not actually generate your PayPal code that it uses. You have to paste on your own PayPal buy now or donate code. Both of these things where a big let down for me and I really think this particular feature could be improved on.

Social: The last feature is the social buttons. This lets you add social share / like buttons over your video. Included are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest.

There are many differnt styles of buttons that you can choose from as well as two different orientations. You can have any or all of these buttons. In my testing the social buttons feature works well and I thought it was a great addition to Video Skins. Having the share / like buttons up front and makes people much more likely to actually click them. This will inevitably get you more social exposure as well as more followers.

Besides these video functions Video Skins also has built in stat tracking. This tracking is easy to follow professional quality and very detailed.

You can see over all statistics for your videos combined or you can see individual video specific statistics.

Ok so what do I think of Video Skins over all? Well if you took the time to read this entire review Im sure you noticed that this software has a lot of different functionality. What I thought of each of these functions ranged from, “I didnt really care about it” to “could be done better” to “I really liked it”. While there where things about Video Skins that I did not like or that I thought could have been done better over all I thought it was a cool tool that is going to be great for anyone who has a website or blog that uses videos. That’s something I want to point out, VideoSkins is about putting functionality over your existing videos and embedding it on your site. It does not change the actual video you use. It just puts functionality over the video and then gives you an embed code to put in your site.

The four options I really liked best where the optin form (any chance to collect a lead is always a good thing), the countdown timer (scarcity sells its just that simple), the social features (social exposure is always a good thing) and the clickable buttons (though this is not so great if you need special characters in your language).

Being totally honest I will admit that this is not the first of this kind of software, there have been others, and truthfully if you already have a software like this then you might not need Video Skins. However if you do not have one, if you have a website or have clients with a website, then video skins is going to be a tool worth considering. Though it is not perfect and for sure has some areas that could have been done better, it does have enough good things about it to still make it a viable tool for some uses.

Sam has provided me with some cool bonuses to give to anyone who picks up Video Skins through my link. You will get instant access to these extra bonuses (and more).

You get instant access to all of these bonuses (as well as more) when you pick up Video Skins.

Click here now to get Video Skins and the bonuses.

 A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.

About the Author

Brett Rutecky

•  
•  

Brett Rutecky is a full time online marketer, web developer, and entrepreneur. He has developed scores of Facebook apps, dozens of custom web sites and hundreds of scripts.

More articles by Brett Rutecky »

• Related:
•  
• Reviews

 

 

 

 

 

StockDreams Review

 

 

 

 

 

NexusGPT Review

 

 

 

 

 

AI Staff Review