How to Automate Video Creation with Make (Integromat)

Laura van Sinderen | 3 December 2022 | 8 min read

Laura van Sinderen

In this no-code tutorial, you’ll learn how to auto-generate different types of marketing videos using Make (Integromat) and Creatomate.

Videos are an integral part of marketing campaigns these days. However, manual video creation takes a lot of time and effort. Wouldn't it be great if you could make videos automatically and use them right away for your marketing? Absolutely, and it's possible too!

Creatomate is an automated video and image generation platform. Make helps you set up automated workflows. By combining these two tools, you can auto-generate any kind of marketing video - automatically and hands-free! Whether you need videos for social media, personalized outreach, advertising and more - there's an automated workflow for you. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to automate your video creation using Make and Creatomate. Let's make videos like this:

Prerequisites

With over thousands apps, you can automate your video creation in several ways. We'll use a simple example in this tutorial to show you how it works. If you get the concept, you can use it however you want.

Here's what we need to get started:

A Creatomate account; to auto-generate the videos. Don’t have an account? Sign up for free.
A Make account; to set up the automated workflow.

Note. This tutorial requires a bit of code. But I'll explain how it works so you can follow along without knowing a thing about coding.

Steps to follow

We're going to start by making a template in Creatomate that will serve as a base for the videos.

After that, we'll create a Make scenario that:

Uses a basic trigger to provide data;
Automatically generates a video in Creatomate;
And process the video with any app you like. Optional: we’ll use Twitter as an example.

Here’s what the scenario will look like:

Note. Please keep in mind that this is just an example. You can use any other app to trigger the scenario and process the videos.

Let’s get started!

1. Create a video template in Creatomate

The videos will be based on a template. You can pick one from the gallery, customize it to fit your needs, or make one yourself. But let’s keep it simple for now and use a template as-is.

Log in to your Creatomate account, go to the My Templates page and click the + New button. You can use any template from the gallery you like. But for the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll take the Quick Promo template from the Featured category. The 1:1 Square size is fine and click Create Template.

This template gives you an idea of the kind of videos you can create. As you can see from the left menu in the template editor, this template has several elements. As Text-1, Text-2, and Video are dynamic elements, you can replace them with other content to create unique videos. You can make elements dynamic or not using the properties panel on the right.

Our next step will be to set up a Make scenario so we can change the Video and Text-1 elements to automatically generate unique videos.

2. Set up trigger: Tools - Basic Trigger

Log in to your Make account and click + Create a new scenario. Let’s add a simple trigger module for demonstration, but in the end you can choose any trigger you need. We’ll search for Tools as the app and Basic trigger as the trigger.

Next, we can add items to set up the trigger. We’ll create 2 items that represent the Text-1 and Video elements from our template. Let’s add an item with Name : Text-1 and Value : Hello World! and add a second item with Name : Video and Value : https://creatomate-static.s3.amazonaws.com/demo/video1.mp4. Then, click OK.

Note: The Text-2 element is also a dynamic one. By ignoring it, the template values are used instead.

Let's right-click this module and select Run this module only to make sure it works. When this is successful, we have a simple trigger with two items that we can use further in this scenario.

Next, we’ll auto-generate the videos using this data.

3. Create Video: HTTP - Get a File

In this step, we’re going to auto-generate a video using Creatomate's Direct API. The direct API is nothing more than a URL with parameters that change elements in a template to generate a video. This may seem a little technical, but follow along and everything will become clear.

Add another module, search for HTTP as the app and select Get a File as the action.

In the URL field, you can copy and paste this Direct API URL:

https://api.creatomate.com/v1/direct?output_format=mp4&template_id=0f03a6cf-9b92-4e1a-a108-5a80e8722dd0&text-1={{encodeURL(1.`text-1`)}}&video={{encodeURL(1.video)}}

But don’t forget to replace the template ID with your own template ID. You can find it in the URL if you’ve opened the template in the editor.

To explain what the above Direct API URL does, these are the parameters that specify the video we want to make:

Start with: https://api.creatomate.com/v1/direct followed by an ? to send a request to Creatomate.
Add: output_format=mp4 to get a video as a result.
Add: &template_id=[YOUR TEMPLATE ID HERE] to specify the template we want to use.

Additionally, we want to replace the templates Text-1 and Video elements with the data provided by our trigger. So, we’ll add the following parameters:

Add: &text-1=encodeURL[1. text-1] to give Creatomate the text in the correct format.
Add: &video=encodeURL[1. video] to give Creatomate the video in the correct format.

When done, click OK.

In order to ensure that our scenario works at this point, click Run Once.

Next, we’ll add a module to process the video we’ve just created. You can use any app you’d like, but let’s go with Twitter to show you how it works.

4. Add action: Twitter - Create a Tweet

Add another module, choose Twitter as the app and select Create a Tweet as the action.

Select your account or sign in with your Twitter credentials first. Then, we’ll enter a text or choose an element from a previous module as our Status.

Next, let’s toggle the switch to Show advanced settings. Change the Upload field to Video or GIF (Size more than 5 MB). For the File field, select the HTTP - Get a file. This way, we can add the generated video to our Twitter post. Leave the other advanced settings as-is and click OK.

Note. Some apps, like Instagram for Business, want a URL, not the actual file. In that case, you can skip the HTTP - Get a File module and use the Direct API right there instead.

5. Test Scenario

By now, we’ve set up a simple scenario. By clicking Run once, we can test if everything works as expected.

The pre-filled data from our trigger app will be used to auto-generate a video that will be posted on Twitter.

Next steps

Yes, that's it! You now know the basics of automating video creation with Make and Creatomate. It's just the beginning, there's so much you can do. Make it work for you by choosing a trigger and action that suits your needs.

Use trigger apps like;