If you have been looking for a free and easy solution to create memes from your images, videos or gifs on desktop then read on for a tutorial about a new tool that is available to us to use and is un-watermarked.
In the visual marketing programmes I deliver for internal and external communications professionals, one of the challenges cover is how to get more engagement from the content that we post, for example in an internal social network or on social media platforms. One way is to ensure that you have visually engaging content to support your story.
A format that has become really popular in the last few years is memes. As a communications professional you might have been looking for easy yo use tools to help you create content to create branded visual content. There are lots of meme creators available for mobile which I like to use, but I know that many corporate communications and marketing professionals prefer to use desktop tools.
An easy to use desktop tool I have used and recommend is Kapwing and it is the platform I use to create the video memes that I share each week to promote the replay of the Live Stream Insiders show. Check out the tutorials on how to use the platform to add captions to videos and to create a stop motion video. Since it was launched Kapwing has developed lots of additional tools including a meme maker. However the free version of Kapwing is watermarked with their logo so I recommend you invest in their paid tool.
I realise that sometimes we don’t want to subscribe to another tool and therefore when I came across the new tool from Filmora to create memes which is free and has no watermark, I immediately tested it out as a potential tool to include in my social marketing and visual content marketing programmes.
In summary, it is a great new tool to bookmark, though does sometimes have ‘bugs’ which I refer to below.
The Filmora meme maker works on Firefox and Chrome and you can use it to create memes from videos, gifs and images by uploading the file or entering a url of your file. There is a notice in their terms of service to remind people only to use content that they have legal rights to use to create a meme. Memes that you create are not retained on their servers – so you will need to download and save the memes that you create.
How To Use The Free Filmora Meme Maker
The interface of the Filmora meme maker is really easy to follow and the features include:
1 – Trimming a video to create a meme from – note that you can upload videos of 50MB so if you want to create a meme from a recorded live stream, you would need to edit the longer video to create smaller files
2 – The option to add text inside the image or video
3 – The ability to add text outside the image or video
4 – Adding your custom text to the meme
5 – Creating a meme that has a white border or black border
6 – Changing the font, alignment, size and colour of your text overlays
7 – Selecting the format that you want to create the meme in – you can save a 5 seconds video as a gif and you can save image memes as a png or jpg file
8 – Easily creating the meme and download it to your hard drive.
How To Trim Your Video To Create A Video Or Gif Meme
1 – If you want to create a meme from a video the video trimmer is easy to use by moving the sliders to the beginning and end of the video section you want to use. Alternatively, you can input specific start and end times.
2 – You will be able to see the start and end time of your clip and the duration – make sure that it is 5 seconds or less if you want to create an animated gif.
3 – Click ‘Done’ when you have finalised the edit you want.
NOTE: If your video is more than 50MB you might want to use the separate tool from Filmora to trim your videos which works for files up to 100MB.
A Step By Step Tutorial To Create A Meme Using Filmora Meme Maker
If you decide to create an image meme you will have the option to crop the image once it has been uploaded to the meme maker.
If you do not have relevant images that you want to use you could use a free stock image site.
Once you have your gif, video or image uploaded, it is easy to create your meme.
One way to make sure your visual content has impact is by selecting the relevant background colour – white or black – to help your meme stand out.
There are lots of fonts you can select to use in your meme – many memes use the Impact font which is the default in the Filmora meme maker.
You can further customise the size of your text in the meme by changing the size to have greater impact.
There are option to change your font to be bold and to be left, right or centre justified.
And you can then choose the colour of your text using the colour picker.
It is easy to add your text overlays – I tend to write my overlay and save it as part of my video editing workflow as I am creating a similar meme each week.
If you wish to add text overlays on top of your image or video you can navigate to the option to add text inside the meme – you also have the option to delete this text.
It is also easy to add a text box and you can position it wherever you like on the meme.
What is particularly good about the tool is that you can change the format of each of the lines of text that you add to your meme as you can see in the image below where I have three different lines of text.
Once you are ready and have customised your meme click ‘Create’ and you will then be able to download your meme.
If you had uploaded a video and wanted to create a video meme, as long as the video is 5 seconds or less in length as I mentioned previously, you have the option to download the meme as an animated gif or as a video.
If you have created an image meme then you get the option to download it as a png or jpg format.
I recommend checking the meme to ensure that it has been created as you hoped – this is where I found a glitch as you will see in the image below when I used a particular font and the spacing of the words appears too far apart. I also found sometimes the meme was not created – just close down your browser and try re-creating your gif again.
The Filmora meme maker certainly makes it easy to create memes for your visual content marketing and is a free tool worth bookmarking.
I do hope that they further enhance the tool in the months to come. I would like to see the option to edit much bigger video files. For example, my 30 minute live stream show in HD is over 200MB in size so nether the meme creator nor the video trimmer tool from Filmora are of assistance. I’d also like to see them introduce the option to add animated stickers, emojis and also size guides for image cropping for Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram stories and Instagram posts.
What other desktop meme generation tools do you like to use?
If you have questions about creating visual content for your campaigns, contact me to ask me your questions or to schedule a consultation or training.
