Adding an animated intro to your YouTube videos is an amazing way to brand your online content. Intros give you an image of professionalism and consistency across all of your videos and build a sense of familiarity for your viewers.
Many people assume that creating a YouTube intro video requires skill, time, and patience. While in the past this may have been true, now there are plenty of tools out there that let you create a YouTube intro in a matter of minutes – even for complete beginners!
Important: When available, we use affiliate links and may earn a commission!
So, how do you make a video intro for YouTube?
That’s exactly what we’ll be focusing on here in this complete guide on how to make a video intro!
We’ll cover two awesome programs you can use to make your video intro and run through a full tutorial from start to finish.
Make sure you stick around for our #1 tip for video animations at the end!
Quick Guide to Making a Video Intro
- Recommended Tools for Creating a Professional Video Intro
- Using Placeit to Make a Video Intro
- Placeit Pricing Guide
- Using VideoHive to Make a Video Intro
- VideoHive Pricing Guide
- The #1 Tip for Video Animations
Recommended Tools for Creating a Professional Video Intro
There are a lot of different ways you can approach creating a YouTube video intro.
You could spend hours learning how to use advanced software for making intros, like Apple Motion or Adobe After Effects. Advanced software like these allow users to create motion graphic content from scratch, which is pretty cool.
But learning these programs takes time and patience. You can expect a lot of headaches along the way.
You could… but there are easy ways that will save you a ton of time and effort!
That’s why we recommend taking the easier route using tools like Placeit and VideoHive. Both of these programs produce incredible final products in much less time and with far fewer headaches!
Placeit and VideoHive are both solid video intro makers. But which one is right for you?
Let’s start by diving into Placeit.
Using Placeit to Make a Video Intro
Here at Primal Video, we love Placeit. It’s not just a video intro maker – you can also create YouTube thumbnails, end cards, banners, logos, just about everything!
The best part about Placeit is that it makes the whole process really easy. You can do all of your editing and customization on their website so there’s no additional software required.
Placeit is an awesome tool for making YouTube intro videos
Plus, there are lots of great templates to choose from, so don’t be surprised if the longest part of the process is actually selecting one!
Some of the templates work with video files in the background while others only use photos or graphics. If you hover your cursor over the template, it will show you how it plays to make your selection process quicker and easier.
So, let’s discuss how to make a video intro for YouTube with Placeit.
How to Make a Video Intro with Placeit
First up, head to the Placeit website. Go to Videos in the top menu bar, then select Intros & Slideshows and then Intros/Outros. This will give you pages upon pages of YouTube intro templates.
You can view the Placeit video intro templates in the Intros and Outros section
Once you’ve selected a template that looks good, click on it and we can start customizing.
After selecting the video intro, video bumper, logo sting, or whatever you prefer to call it, it’s time to start customizing. Here are the basic steps for customization on Placeit:
- Add and customize text in the top left corner
- Click Upload Image under the Logo section
- Select an image from your files (such as your company’s logo)
- Crop the image so that it fits well within the template
- Customize the animation effect under Logo Animation
- Exit the static image preview of your updated logo animation
- Click Update Slide to generate a full video preview that you can watch
- Make adjustments to the video on the right-hand side of the page – change the background color, use background images, add in an audio track, etc.
- Adjust the video playback speed on the left hand side of the page depending on if you’d like a shorter or longer video intro
Placeit allows you to include 20 characters in each text box, you can customize the font and color
Going through these steps takes a matter of seconds. Who knew the process could be so easy!?
To save a draft or add a template to favorites, you’ll need to create an account or log in
Downloading Your Customized Video
Once you’re happy with how you’ve customized the original template, you’re now ready to download it. To do that, just hit Download. You’ll get a notification telling you to play all of your slides before downloading.
Hit the Play All button for a full preview before Placeit processes the video intro ready for download
Go to Play All in the bottom left corner and your video will be processed. You can then replay and download your completed YouTube video intro.
When you hit download, you’ll see the free and paid pricing options which we’ll cover shortly.
Using the More Advanced Templates
What we covered above was using a fairly basic Placeit template with one image upload.
This resource also offers some more advanced templates where you can upload multiple images, add in custom text, and input a logo to play through the intro.
Even if you go with a more advanced template, Placeit has done a really great job of keeping things simple. Now, there’s no need to pay a professional on Fiverr or Upwork to customize a template for you – you can just do it yourself and you can do it for crazy cheap!
Placeit Pricing Guide
When you go to download your video intro, you’ll be given a few options:
- Download a free version with a Placeit watermark
- Make a single purchase to get the video you just purchased in high resolution without a watermark – the cost depends on the template but is usually $10 or less
- Get an unlimited subscription which gives you access to all Placeit templates for $14.95/month or $89.69/year
We recommend making the purchase to remove the watermark for a more professional final product
If you plan on using just 1 or 2 templates, purchasing each one individually is a good option. If you’d prefer to have access to all of the features and templates, the unlimited subscription would be the way to go.
It’s totally up to you, but many people find that the subscription is worth it.
Now, that’s everything you need to know about how to make a video intro for YouTube on Placeit!
If you want more customization and control when it comes to creating your video intro, then option 2 might be for you!
Using VideoHive to Make a Video Intro
VideoHive is great because there are SO many templates for you to choose from and you have a greater ability to customize them.
The major difference with VideoHive is that you can edit the templates on your own editing software.
VideoHive is an awesome option for those who want a more customized video intro
What makes VideoHive especially powerful is that you can get specific templates for your editing software. Whether you’re using Apple Motion, Adobe Premier, Adobe After Effects or Davinci Resolve – there’s a template that will suit your needs.
This means even if you don’t have any of the paid software, you can simply pay for the VideoHive template and edit it for free in Davinci Resolve.
Davinci Resolve is an awesome editing free video editing application that works on Mac and PC – so this is a great option.
Even though VideoHive doesn’t support the customization of templates live on their website, it will take you to the Placeit website if you want to edit onsite without any additional editing software.
How to Make a Video Intro with VideoHive
To get started, head to the VideoHive website. Go to Video, select your editing software category (we’re using Davinci Resolve), and select Openers.
Select the editing software you’ll be using and then go to Openers for all the video intro templates
Browse through the templates until you find one that fits. Then purchase and download it to your computer. The template usually saves as a zip file, so you can go ahead and open the file.
We’re going to run through the video intro creation process on Davinci Resolve because we think it’s great! But you can use whichever editing software your template was designed for.
Let’s get started.
- Open Davinci Resolve. Right click in the project window and select the Restore Project Archive… button. Then navigate to your template file and open it.
- Make sure you’re in the edit tab down the bottom. In the top left corner, you’ll see the different folders of the project including Edit, Final and Other. Go to Edit – this is where you can add images, videos, text and music.
- Click into the Images folder and drag your images or videos to the timeline. Start with Image 01 and add the number of images or videos you’d like. Don’t forget to add your logo in the Image – Logo box.
- Click the Final button on the left hand side. This is where your primary timeline is. It might be called Final or Render but either way it will contain the master timeline with all of your content.
- Select the Text button in the left sidebar to add and edit text. Double click on the specific text box in the top left corner, then double click on the text layer in the timeline and on the right hand side you can make any edits to the text. You can change the font, size, spacing, color – make any customizations to the text that you like.
Adding and customizing text is simple – start by clicking on the numbered text box and edit on the right hand side of the screen
Downloading Your Customized Video
Once you’ve made all the edits and customizations that you want, you can either copy and paste it to your project if you normally edit in Davinci Resolve or you can export the video file and use it in any video editing software.
To save out your YouTube video intro, select Deliver on the bottom menu bar. In the top left corner click YouTube, press Add to Render Queue, then Render All.
You can copy and paste your video intro directly into your video project in Davinci Resolve or simply export the file
If you want to learn more about Davinci Resolve, you can check out our complete beginners tutorial here.
And there you go, you’ve made a customized video intro with a VideoHive template!
VideoHive Pricing Guide
In VideoHive, you pay per template. Most of the templates are around the $18 mark. We think this is pretty reasonable especially if you can edit for free in Davinci Resolve.
All of VideoHive’s templates are reasonably priced from around $9 to $22
The #1 Tip for Video Animations
As this is a video “intro”, it’s common to assume that it should be the very first thing that viewers see. But that isn’t the case! Which brings us to the #1 tip for video animations:
Don’t put your YouTube video intro at the start of your video!
This is one of the biggest ways to lose engagement.
Our #1 tip when it comes to YouTube video intros
When you put that shiny new intro clip at the beginning of your video, you might drive viewers away before they even know if they’re in the right place or not. People’s attention spans tend to be short so you need to grab their attention right away.
That’s why our #1 tip is to always start with a “hook” that lets viewers know exactly what the video is all about.
With the right introduction, you’ll be able to tell your viewers exactly what they can expect from the video so that they know they’ve come to the right place. Then, you can keep them engaged with that cool intro clip you just made.
So remember, give a quick teaser before adding your intro video!
Now You Know How to Make an Intro for YouTube!
There you have it – the completely updated tutorial on how to make intros for YouTube.
Placeit is an amazing tool that’s great for beginners who don’t want to spend tons of time or money on creating a video intro. VideoHive offers HEAPS of templates and allows for more customization and control.
But what’s the best YouTube video maker?
Well, we love the simplicity of Placeit. Unless we need to get in and make something super customized, Placeit is our go-to video intro maker. But VideoHive is an awesome, more advanced option for those who want greater customizability options.
We’ve shown you exactly how to make an intro for YouTube videos the quick and easy way!
Another option is to start entirely from scratch without using a pre-built template, but as we said before, this will add on hours of extra work and numerous headaches.
Now you’re ready to add intro animations to each of your online videos for a professional look that will keep your viewers engaged and boost overall brand awareness.
If you’d like to go one step further and add animated titles into your YouTube videos, check out our full tutorial to learn how to create these step-by-step!
And for more helpful insight on creating YouTube videos, check out the Primal Video YouTube Ranking Guide. In this guide you’ll learn about the latest tools and strategies for improving video rankings on both YouTube and Google – and it’s completely free!
Links
When available, we use affiliate links and may earn a commission!
Recommended Software:
Recommended Gear & Resources
Check out an up-to-date list of all the gear, software & tools we use and recommend right now at Primal Video on our resources page here!
Related Content
