The venerable Content Samurai video production platform recently received a name change to Vidnami.
The name change, along with a few more recent upgrades that took place while still named Content Samurai, convinced me that the platform is worthy of an updated review.
With that in mind, here are my thoughts on Vidnami.
For starters, if your business makes use of any kind of video, Vidnami is something you probably want to take a look at.
That's because it's one of the more utilitarian video programs I know about.
In fact, it just might be the Swiss Army knife video solution that you've been looking for, because it's suited for a pretty wide variety of common video types.
I've been a customer of Content Samurai for several years now. I find that I tend to think of it first for some of my video projects, largely I think, because it enjoys one of the simpler start to finish production workflows of any video software I've worked with.
If you think you already know Vidnami from previous versions of Content Samurai, I suspect you might be happily surprised to see what the new and improved version is up to.
With the caveat that there really is no perfect video production software for every project, let's discuss who Vidnami is best suited for, and who it's not.
Who's It For (and Not)?
Vidnami is a cloud-based video production software that's well suited for creating many of the most commonly needed kinds of videos that are used in the worlds of online business, local business and social media.
These include product videos, product review videos, Q and A videos, local business advertising videos, social media, influencer videos, video sales letters, video course content and more.
If I had to choose just one feature that sets Vidnami apart from competing products, it would definitely be its speed and ease of use.
And that's no accident either, because its production workflow is helped along by clever use of artificial intelligence, video templates and some other features that we’ll cover in this video
A Vidnami subscription includes access to an extensive library of royalty, free stock, audio, video and still images that you can use to create an unlimited number of original videos.
So it's pretty good choice for somebody whose budget precludes purchasing these kinds of assets from some of the more expensive premium sources, like iStock by Getty Images.
Vidnami is definitely not a replacement for some of the more full-featured video editing platforms like Pinnacle Studio Ultimate.
In fact, it's in a completely different category all together.
So don't expect to work ‘post production’ of your next Hollywood blockbuster film or even the trailer using Vidnami.
Nor, for that matter, is it going to be useful for producing screen capture videos that programs like Camtasia really excel at.
So if you're in the market for one of those kinds of programs, Vidnami is not what you're looking for.
But, if you need to regularly produce good looking, high quality content videos of the kinds I mentioned, you'll definitely want to take a closer look at, Vidnami, because that really is it's sweet spot.
Peaking Under the Hood
So with that said, let's take a walk through of Vidnami
When you log into your account, you're presented with previous videos that you've made and given a chance to create a new video.
Clicking on “Create a New Video” brings you into this screen, where you're presented with a choice of various templates.

All of the templates come in either landscape or square versions for use on certain social media accounts and, as you can see, templates are pre designed settings, different fonts, different color schemes, etcetera.
You are free to modify any of them and save them as a custom template.
Within the collection of templates, you can then choose different kinds of videos. For example, a content video, an influencer video, an instant ad, a sales video and so forth.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
The instant ad templates are interesting.
These are pre-created ads, generally 15 to 20 seconds long, scripted with copy and music. These will most likely be of interest for local businesses or Ecomm store owners.
In some cases these ads as useable just as they are, and in any case are easy to modify to your liking, since you're able to change the text and the images on the fly.

A sales video template is what you probably associate with the typical video sales letter look of scrolling copy, and various templates suitable for these kinds of videos are provided.
The course training video style templates are exactly as the name implies. They’re designed for creating course content that enjoys a consistent designed look and feel.
And then there are property video templates. These may be of particular interest if you are in the real estate business, or you provide advertising services for real estate agents.
Some of these templates will allow you to brand them with the real estate agents photo and contact information, and that stays on the screen throughout the video.
So they're great marketing tools for real estate agents.
So once you;ve chosen a template, the next step will be to script your video. You can add a script in a couple of different ways, including uploading a file, copying and pasting our script or just typing it right into the script form.

Select 'Use This Template' and then add your script...

Once you've entered your script, the next step is to go ahead and set up your scenes by selecting video clips and or still images to populate the scenes.
The best way to start this is just to let the artificial intelligence within Vidnami select scenes for you. It's extremely easy to change any scenes that you don't like. But starting with the scenes pre-created is a huge time saver and often will be just fine as it.

The next step is to add a soundtrack.
This could be either a music only soundtrack, or it can be a recording of your own voice that you upload by file.
It can also be an auto voice that you generate using any of a dozen or so of the included male or female voices. These employ text-to-audio A.I. to generate the soundtracks.
So the program will step you through each scene, give you the chance to record the words for that scene, and if you’re happy with it, you just simply go on to the next scene, one after another.
This means you don't need to record a perfect audio track of the entire video all at one time.
So generally using this method, you can get a pretty good recording the first time out using this method.
After that you can preview a low resolutions version of your newly designed video, add a watermark if you'd like, and generate the video for download.
So that's Vidnami in a nutshell.
So What's It Going to Cost?
Vidnami is a subscription-based platform that retails at $47 per month.
However, the company is currently running a special discount offer for new customers that, at $35 per month, will save you 25% or about $144 per year.
Special pricing is available here, and was still in effect as of the time this post was published.
Vidnami also offers a FREE 14-day trial subscription if you'd like to kick the tires and see if it really is a fit for your business.
Conclusion
To conclude, Vidnami remains one of my favorite ‘go to’ video creation tools, and it gets high marks for ease of use, efficiency and speed.
Its wide variety of pre-designed templates, it's A.I., voiceover capability and built in transcription features position it as a uniquely capable ‘go to’ choice for many kinds of video content projects.
And going forward, I fully expect it will only become more capable and useful to its subscriber base.