End of 2020 Update and a peek into 2021
Friends/fellow builders/peers --
Hope you're getting some rest after an unprecedented year. I wish you a happy holidays and renewed fortitude for 2021.
I want to share with your some updates on AVflow.io, our low/no code builder for video applications and workflows. With AVflow you can build an application in minutes, not weeks or months. (Demo)
Our mission is to bring the cost (time, $ and prerequisite knowledge) of idea experimentation down to zero. We wholeheartedly agree with Marc Andreessen's call to arms, It's Time To Build, and we believe we are merely at the infancy of online video. We are excited by the numerous new audio and video applications that emerged this year, many in response to the pandemic, as they offered a peek into the future. And we want to enable the next million more. By people of all backgrounds, all over the world, with their own unique ideas for how the world should be better, and maybe even more fun.
AVflow 2020 accomplishments:
- Support for Functions: AVflow has a bunch of hooks but you may need a specific action and Functions lets you run custom scripts, programmatically, in your workflow! Create an animated gif, add fades at the top and tail, add a watermark: it's now super simple.
- Added Tables: basically a visual database that can serve as a trigger for a workflow such as using a webhook to insert a URL to a YouTube video in the Table that catalyzes the video ingest and analysis for faces, brand logos, or deepfakes. And Tables are a place where data is saved, such as metadata of a video (like start timecode, FPS, resolution) and used to inform subsequent steps in a workflow (for example to preserve the same start TC for proxies or the caption file).
- Laid the foundation for highly robust, scalable infrastructure: we've been making sure AVflow can scale up and down to meet unpredictable demand and the predictable complexity of video (imagine 16k Blackmagic RAW rushes being dumped in at once!!). Plus we've added many hooks for ingest/triggers, audio/video transcoding, AI functionality, and publishing/distribution to numerous platforms
To accomplish in Q1, 2021:
- Allow users to connect their own APIs. We've had a few requests of users wanting to add the Vimeo API! (January)
- Add billing/payments/plans (January)
- Open the site up to public users. 🤯 (January)
- Branching logic (Q1)
Questions we are still working through:
- Are our earliest users going to be building video products or creating post production workflows?
- If the former: are our early adopters going to be video application PMs/entrepreneurs trying new startup ideas or developers at established companies testing new product ideas?
- How much should we charge for our entry-level plan? The model will be freemium and cost will accrue based on executed flows. But we are exploring whether the entry-level plan is $20 or $50.
There's a lot to do in 2021. If you want access to AVflow (and haven't received an invite yet), let me know. Send us any thoughts on the above and feature requests, and thank you to all those who used AVflow to test / build their projects on and for the feedback.
All the best for 2021.
Best
Shamir