Getting started

There are two ways in, and the right one depends on whether you are learning the editor or already know what you want to build.

From a template. The template gallery holds finished, working projects. Open one, swap its data for yours, and you have a video without ever having built a layout. This is the fastest way to see what the tool can do.

From a blank project. Choose this when you know your data and want the layout to follow it rather than the other way round.

For a team learning the product, have everyone start from a template on day one. The editor makes a great deal more sense once you have seen a complete project working from the inside.

Most of the editor is forgiving. Two settings are not, and both are chosen when the project is created.

Canvas size decides where the finished video fits. 1920×1080 is the standard landscape frame for YouTube and presentations; 1080×1920 is the vertical frame for Shorts, Reels, and TikTok. You can change it afterwards, but every layer you have positioned will need revisiting, so it is much cheaper to decide up front.

Period is how far your data steps between rows — daily, monthly, or annually. This one genuinely matters: the period seeds the row type of the spreadsheet behind the project, so changing it after you have entered data means re-entering the rows.

Pick from the story, not from the shape you happen to like.

A ranking that changes over time is a race — bar, line, pie, bubble, treemap, or table. The bar chart race is the familiar one and a good default.

A detailed head-to-head between a few things is an advanced comparison. If you are comparing two to six items in detail rather than watching a ranking move, this is the type you want, and it is the one teams most often overlook.

A geographic story is a map race. For country or region data, bar + map chart race is usually the better pick over a plain map — it shows both where the activity is and who is leading.

See choosing a chart type for the full catalogue, including the combination types.

Every data-driven project is backed by a spreadsheet you can edit in place. Paste from Excel or Google Sheets, upload a CSV, or type directly into it.

The shape that works is one column per item and one row per period, with the first column holding the date. Optional header rows attach an image, a colour, or a category to each column.

Preparing your data covers the shape in detail. It is worth reading before your team imports anything, because most of the time lost in a first project is lost here.

A project is a stack of layers over a timeline. The chart itself is one layer; titles, dates, background images, particles, captions, and audio are others, each with its own start time and duration.

Select a layer and its settings appear in the right-hand panel. Most of the craft in a good chart video is here — but the defaults are sensible, so a first project needs very little of it.

Layers are also where the keyboard shortcuts pay off. See keyboard shortcuts.

Scrub the timeline to check the animation before committing to a render. Rendering takes real time and, on paid plans, real credits, so catching a mistake in preview is always cheaper.

Then choose a resolution and frame rate and export. The free plan exports MP4 at 30 fps with a small watermark; Pro removes the watermark and unlocks 60 fps plus WebM and transparent WebP.

Aim for a finished length between thirty seconds and three minutes — which is also the free plan's ceiling, so a first project rarely runs into it.