Not quite there yet
It's not often I leave less than 5* reviews unless the app is truly terrible – or the founder has done something truly terrible (sadly that happens).
This is the first time I've bothered with an app like this. I have a use case, but the quality of previous apps has never been good enough. I was unsure about Pipio's quality too but some friends said it was better than the others, so I tried it.
No matter what I did (whether I used a solid colour for the background and used Davinci Resolve Studio for chroma-keying, used their in-built photo backgrounds, or export it as a transparent video) the edges around the characters were always noisy. The video quality just isn't up to it. Maybe the quality has been lowered to cope with demand since friends recommended it? Or maybe this is it.
Some of the voices are good (the WellSaid ones) but not enough choice and it doesn't come close to ElevenLabs - sadly no LTD on that though.
Hopefully they can improve in time. The basics are there. I'll happily look again if they return in the future with improvements. But if you're hoping for great quality now, it's not quite ready sadly. A reluctant but inevitable refund I'm afraid.
Michael_Pipio
May 9, 2024Hi @johnr123 we're sorry to hear your experience with the product hasn't been as optimal as you'd hoped so far.
Firstly, despite the fact that we didn't achieve the coveted 5* review this time, it's my genuine hope that you didn't actually find the application or our avatars to be "terrible" as I genuinely believe neither to be true. And if its in any way due to perceived nefariousness on the part of the founders (gulp 😅) then I'll take this opportunity to assure you on mine and Bernardt's behalf that we're pretty stand-up guys (at least our wives think so...though maybe less so after how much time we've been spending on the campaign) just trying bring the world an application that allows users affordable, scalable video content creation.
Secondly, digging into your specific issue further, I'd be curious to hear a bit more about which avatars you were experiencing the chroma key issue with and what the resulting videos looked like when using an external key tool vs. the transparent video output feature we offer, if thats something you'd be willing to share (please feel free to reach out to us at support@mypipio.com if so).
For reference, our avatars are created using footage shot across multiple different video shoots on multiple different individuals. There are avatars featured on the platform that were created prior to implementing and improving upon some filming best practices for these avatar shoots. This includes specific camera and lighting requirements that make things like chroma keying during post-processing much more manageable (and less noisy). However, the majority of the avatars on the platform (and none of the upcoming avatars) should have this issue, which is why I ask which you were having problems with.
Regardless, if it's just a matter of chroma key noise being a problem then I can confidently say this is something that will literally no longer be an issue with 90% of our avatars in about 1-2 months once we've completed our next avatar shoot. And the only reason it isn’t 100% is because we’re not sure we want to remove the older avatars that are exhibiting this issue as many people are still utilizing them in their videos. I would HIGHLY recommend sticking around if this is the case. Not to minimize it too much, but this is a relatively “easy” fix on our end.
Regarding other qualitative issues, I very much welcome interested users to take a look at some samples of avatar videos generated on our platform. I’ve posted several here for reference:
https://appsumo.com/products/pipio/reviews/mixed-feelings-1113770/#1114678
We definitely hope you’ll stick around as I’m confident most, if not all, of your concerns are things that can and will be addressed in the next couple months. I hope to see you around.