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What a motion artifact is

A motion artifact is a short animation made of scenes: a title card, a number that counts up, a chart that draws itself, a logo, a list that builds line by line. Allternit writes it from your request, you scrub and edit it in the artifact window, and you export it as a video. Motion is for text, numbers, charts and logos. It does not generate footage or people. Motion is available on every plan, including Free. Organization admins can turn it off for their org.

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Making one

  • Pick Motion under the message box, or type /motion followed by the request: /motion a 20-second explainer of our Q3 numbers.
  • Or ask in any chat: “make a short animation of this”.
  • To start from something you already have, open a doc or dashboard artifact, open the Download menu (the arrow next to Copy) and choose Turn into motion. Allternit reads the artifact and uses only the facts and figures in it.

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Editing

The motion opens in the artifact window with the player on top.
  • Play, pause and loop. Press the round button to play. Loop is on by default.
  • Scrub. Drag the slider to any moment. Playback pauses while you scrub. The small ticks on the slider mark where scenes start.
  • Scenes. The list shows every scene with its length. Click one to jump to it. For the selected scene you can move it up or down, duplicate it, delete it or change its type. Add scene inserts a new one after it.
  • Edit. Change the text, numbers, colours and length of the selected scene. The preview updates as you type. For charts, edit the labels and values as rows. For a logo, paste an https or data:image link, or leave it empty to show the name as a wordmark.
  • Theme. Set the background, text, accent and muted colours and the font (sans, serif or mono) for the whole motion.
  • Transitions. Each scene after the first has a transition in: fade, wipe, slide or cut.
Edits save by themselves a moment after you stop typing. Each save is a new version, like any artifact.

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Edit by asking

You can also ask in the chat: “slow scene 2”, “change the figure to 1,250”, “use our green as the accent”. Allternit changes only what you asked and saves a new version.

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Reduced motion

If your device is set to reduce motion, the player opens on a still frame and does not play by itself. You can still scrub and, if you choose, press play.

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Exporting a video

Open Download → MP4 video (the arrow next to Copy), or press Export video under the player. A progress bar shows the render, and you can cancel it.
  • Allternit Desktop renders each frame and encodes it with ffmpeg on your computer, then asks where to save the file. If ffmpeg isn’t installed, Desktop encodes in the app like the web does.
  • ai.allternit.com, the phone layout and the m.allternit.com app encode in your browser when it can encode H.264, and you get an MP4. This is the fastest way, and nothing leaves your device.
  • When your browser can’t encode H.264 (for example an older iPhone or iPad), Allternit renders the video in the cloud instead and downloads it when it’s ready. You don’t have to choose.
The video has no sound. The picture matches the preview frame for frame.

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Export MP4 (cloud)

Press Export MP4 (cloud) under the player, or Download → MP4 video (cloud), to render on Allternit’s servers even when your browser could do it itself. It suits long clips and slow or low-power devices. It isn’t shown on Desktop, which renders locally.
  1. Allternit saves your latest edits first, because the cloud renders the saved version.
  2. The status line shows Waiting for the cloud renderer (with how many videos are ahead of yours) and then Rendering in the cloud with a percentage. You can cancel at any time.
  3. When it’s done, the MP4 downloads. Where a Download MP4 button appears instead, press it to save the file.
Cloud export is on every plan, the same as Motion. You can have two videos rendering at once. The cloud copy of a finished video is deleted after 24 hours. If a limit stops an export, the message says what to change: ask Gizzi for a smaller size, a shorter video or a lower frame rate, or export from Allternit Desktop, which has no such limit. Two things differ from the preview in a cloud export: a logo given as a web address (not an embedded image) shows its name as a wordmark, and the fonts are Allternit’s own (Inter, Source Serif and JetBrains Mono) instead of your device’s.

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On a phone

The player fills the top of the screen. Scenes, Edit and Theme are tabs under it. Everything above works the same, including export. Sharing settings are only on Desktop and the web.

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Limits

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For developers

See Motion body format for the JSON schema and the renderer.