Instagram has recently reported that ‘Stories’ reached over 500 million daily users making it an incredible growth opportunity for anyone wanting to grow their account but also a fantastic platform for you to showcase creative work.
There is a common misconception that you have to use Instagram's own story editor & camera clips to create Instagram stories. Therefore, in this post, I am going to show you how to create stories using Mixkit's incredible library of royalty-free vertical stock videos and VEED's online video editor. Combined they unlock pretty amazing results and help social content creators to save time and budget.
1. Find your video
Head over to Mixkit's catalog of vertical videos and choose the footage that best suits your visual style. The maximum duration of an Instagram story is only 15 seconds. If you upload a longer video, IG will automatically split your video into 15-second story chunks, but only if the video uploaded is under 60 seconds. This means we might have to trim the video, but we will come back to that step later. For longer videos, we recommend uploading them to IGTV.
Once you have found the video you like, simply press the download button in the bottom right corner and then your video will start downloading.
TIP: It has been proven that bright and more vibrant content with get more likes on Instagram.
2.Edit your Instagram Story
Now we are going to use VEED.IO to edit our video. From the home page, click upload video and the editor will open. Once the editor is open you are presented with the following tools. Add text, filter video, add image to video, subtitle video and video effects.
Assuming you uploaded a vertical video your aspect ratio should automatically be vertical, although you can turn any of Mixkit’s videos into vertical videos by simply changing the canvas size to 9:16 labeled "Vertical" using a dropdown in top right.
For this demonstration, I am going to make a music video, but you can make anything you like, but this tutorial we should briefly touch on most tools for creating Instagram stories.
Anyway, to make our music video we need too:
1. Add music
2. Add video effects
3. Add text
Let's do it!
First, you might need to trim your video, you can do this by clicking trim at the bottom of the video and selecting the 15 seconds of the clip you like. I am going to resize the video a little to better fit the frame and also head to the effects tab and choose the "dusty film" video effect. I chose the dusty file video effect as it gives the video an analog feel.
I am also going to add a video filter, also known as a LUT (Look Up Table). LUTs are essentially color grading filters, the same as Instagram filters but applied to every frame of the video. In this case, I am going to choose one to make my video more dynamic and vibrant.
Now I am going to add music and click upload to add my song. All major file formats will work such as MP3 and WAV. I am now going to change the start time of the song so the music plays from the chorus.
Finally, I am going to add some text so everyone knows my album is out. Simply click add text and a new text box will be added. You can now choose from a list of text styles and fonts. I am going to change the text style to outline and also change the font and color too. Finally, we are going to change the text timings. You can also create a kinetic typography look. Once you are happy with your video just hit download and you are done. Your project is also automatically saved to your account if you would like to make changes later.
TIP: In video settings, you can target Instagram as output for best render settings.
Transfer your Instagram story to your phone
Now that you have downloaded the video the best way to transfer it to your phone is via Airdrop on a Mac or via google drive or dropbox on a PC & Mac. Once your video is on your phone's local storage, head to Instagram and in the top left click the + button on your profile and your phone camera will open.
Finally, just swipe up and you will see your camera roll images and photos. Select your video and hit ‘Post’ and you are done.
Instagram Video templates
If you are looking to save even more time, we created loads of Instagram stories templates. All the templates take advantage of Mixkit's amazing authentic stock videos. You can simply click on the template you like and the editor will open. From there, change assets and text to meet your needs. I hope you have enjoyed this little tutorial on creating Instagram stories using Mixkit’s videos and VEED.IO editor.
