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The Angry Editor: Template Search is the new Music Search time suck

Scott Simmons
The Angry Editor: Template Search is the new Music Search time suck 6

Welcome to The Angry Editor. 

For years I’ve teased the idea of The Angry Editor as a regular column here on The Editblog as a way to complain, gripe, nitpick, bellyache as well as air grievances out loud and in public when 280 characters on Twitter doesn’t work. 

Today’s topic:

The massive time suck when it comes to searching stock sites for a good graphics template.

When editors are talking shop, we often talk about how much of a time suck it is to search for good stock music. The stock music sites are plentiful, with some good music in them and a few of them even have some really good search tools. But it can still be a black and dark abyss. As you audition tracks, find a few good ones to narrow down to what you want to use.

But I’ll add a new time suck that is even worse than looking for good music. It’s scouring the stock sites for a good graphics template. That template might be as simple as a single line lower third all the way up to a multi-second opening title package. It’s a pretty amazing time we live in, (especially for those like myself who aren’t overly talented in motion graphic design) that there are template sites and stock sites that let us pay a reasonable rate for graphics tailored to our specific editing platform of choice. But as many of these sites have been around for years, and new content streams in on a regular basis, it’s getting to where many of them are a mess.

Hey look Envato, there’s only 16,000 lower thirds for me to sort through to try to find one I might like to try.

I know what you’re saying, “Hey angry editor, be less of a dumb editor and use some of the filtering options. That’ll help you narrow your selection down.” And that’s true. By choosing a few filters, I did get it down to just over 3,000.

3000 is better than 16000. I’ll give you that.

The problem now is that so many of the options that are returned have multiple graphics within a single returned result. So if even half of these 3000 returned results have 9 different lower third options within the single result, I’m back to my 16,000 number. And I guess a “TITLES PACK” might have what I’m looking for because technically a lower third is a title but the preview thumbnail is so bad I won’t know that until I click into that “Corporate Titles Pack.”

But wouldn’t this be a great place for AI to help solve this voluminous and monotonous search nightmare?

It just so happens Envato Elements has an “AI Labs” tab with an AI search! That should make it much quicker to find a simple two-line lower third that has an elegant animation on and off the screen.

Let’s go!

Isn’t AI supposed to help with the boring busywork?

Nice job Envato AI labs.

Perhaps I’ll have better luck with Motion Array.

Hey that’s less than 13,000!

Well that’s a whole lot of results also returned. I actually expect a lot of results with such a simple term as “lower thirds,” as there’s a whole lot that can encompass. Let’s get a bit more specific because I know exactly what I want, a simple two-line lower third that has an elegant animation on and off the screen.

Hey that’s 0!

I think you get the idea here.

Honestly, this grievance is less about the number of search results returned when looking for video templates and more that these websites have pretty bad granular search and filtering options. While there are plenty of search filters, it still seems difficult to narrow down findings. I know they are trying, they just need to be better.

In the meantime, perhaps we’re just resolved to a world of having to spend hours upon hours searching and digging.

Now don’t get me started on the quality of a lot of what these stock sites are selling these days, or the instructions on how to use some of this stuff.

If you have a stock template site that you just love, or want to defend Envato or Motion Array (I’m picking on them because those are ones I’ve used extensively) then please let us know in the comments below.

I asked around on social media how others might feel about this topic.

Yup absolutely. I almost wonder if it’s a marketing thing. You look for something, get a ton of results and think “oh there’s heaps of stuff here!”

I mean it’s fine, I found some good stuff, but it seemed harder than maybe it needed to be.

— Dylan Reeve (@dylanreeve.com) December 18, 2024 at 1:50 PM

Music search has always been a horrible time suck. Clients never appreciate it. It’s always wonderful when I have someone else who will do it for me.

— Robb, with 2 b’s (@nledit.bsky.social) December 18, 2024 at 1:58 PM

On that subject – why do stock footage companies never have any mechanism to re-conform the watermarked preview clip with the paid-for full quality version (like actual matching timecode or something)!?

— dickij10.bsky.social (@dickij10.bsky.social) December 18, 2024 at 2:09 PM

It might be worthwhile to build a good relationship with a Motion Designer. The need is often somewhat repetitive (titles, l3rds) and shouldn’t incur a massive cost. It used to be my job, and I still make all the graphics I need. I was always happy to do quick gigs while working on longer projects.

— Jukka Tallinen (@jukkatallinen.com) December 19, 2024 at 3:09 AM

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