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Modèle vidéo

Animated Column Chart Race Maker

Turn a spreadsheet of values over time into an animated column chart: vertical bars grow upward and swap places as your data moves through time. Upload a CSV, pick your columns, export an MP4.

Aperçu à venir

Race Columnanimated column chart

Qu'est-ce qu'un Race Column ?

Rotate a bar chart race ninety degrees and you get an animated column chart: instead of bars stretching sideways from the left edge, columns grow straight up from a shared baseline, swapping left-right order as one overtakes another. It's the same underlying idea as a bar chart race, a leaderboard that visibly reshuffles instead of a table you compare row by row, just standing up instead of lying down.

That rotation isn't cosmetic. Columns read better than horizontal bars once you're down to a handful of series, because the eye tracks height changes quickly and the layout fits naturally into a square or vertical frame: an Instagram post, a Story, a portrait-oriented slide. A ten-bar horizontal race needs a wide canvas to keep labels legible; five or six columns sit comfortably in a square crop without cramming text.

PlotSet's Race Column template renders this from a plain wide-format sheet: no keyframing, no animation software required. Upload dates down the left and one column per entity, and the template interpolates the motion between each row, so the columns rise and swap smoothly even when your source data only has a few time steps, four in the solar, wind and hydro sample above.

Les données dont vous avez besoin

Organisez votre feuille comme ceci et le modèle Race Column fonctionne immédiatement.

CSV d'exemple
DateSolarWindHydro
2010-01-01321811020
2015-01-012224171209
2020-01-017147331332
2024-01-01141910171412
Colonne clé

Date

One row per point in time, oldest first. Each remaining column is a column.

The sheet is wide, not long: one row per time step, one column per entity, exactly like the sample above with Date, Solar, Wind and Hydro as separate fields. If your source data has a separate row for every entity-and-date pair (common when it comes straight out of a database), pivot it so each entity gets its own column before uploading.

Rows need to be in chronological order, oldest first, and the date column has to parse as an actual date. You don't need even spacing: the sample above jumps from 2010 to 2015 to 2020 to 2024 and still renders a clean race, but more rows give PlotSet more points to interpolate between, so the columns rise and swap more smoothly. Four or five time steps is enough to animate; eight or more starts to look genuinely fluid.

Quand créer un Race Column

  • A handful of series, not a dozen

    Three to six columns is where this format shines: energy sources, product lines, a few competing brands. Wide horizontal bars start to feel cramped as label count grows; upright columns hit a ceiling sooner but look cleaner within it.

  • Square and vertical social formats

    Instagram feed posts, Stories and TikTok crops are taller than they are wide. A column race fills that frame naturally, where a wide bar race would need heavy cropping or shrunk-down labels to fit.

  • Totals that climb over time

    Cumulative installs, capacity or output, anything trending upward, reads intuitively as columns rising toward the top of the frame, echoing how a growth chart is normally drawn.

  • Dashboards and decks with a portrait slide

    If the destination is a vertical slide or a printed one-pager, a column layout matches the page orientation instead of fighting it.

Quand l'éviter

  • Long lists of competing entities

    Once you're past eight or nine columns, the labels underneath start overlapping or getting cut. Switch to Race Bar, where horizontal space scales better with entity count.

  • Widescreen video destinations

    For YouTube or a 16:9 deck, a horizontal bar race uses the frame's width more naturally. Save the column layout for square or vertical placements.

  • Precise value comparisons

    Columns are still in motion, so nobody's reading exact heights off the screen. Pair the video with a static chart or table if the specific numbers need to be citable.

Comment créer un Race Column

Du tableur au MP4 rendu, étape par étape.

01

Open the Race Column template

PlotSet loads Race Column with the solar, wind and hydro capacity data used throughout this page, so you can see the expected sheet layout before touching your own file.

02

Shape your sheet as one column per bar

First column is the date, oldest row first. Every other column is one entity that gets its own vertical column, and its header becomes the label underneath it.

03

Upload your CSV or Excel file

Import a CSV, an .xlsx file, or paste directly from a spreadsheet. The template reads the header row automatically and maps a column to each numeric field.

04

Choose colors and set the pacing

Assign a color per entity, pick a typeface, and set how long the race plays before settling on the final order. Add a music track if the export is headed to social.

05

Render on PlotSet's servers and download

Preview the animation, then render. PlotSet renders the MP4 on its servers, so there's nothing to install: download the file when it's done, or share the link directly.

Partez du modèle Race Column avec des données d'exemple déjà chargées, puis remplacez-les par les vôtres.

Ouvrir le modèle

Race Column : questions fréquentes

Same animation, different orientation. A bar chart race grows bars sideways from the left; a column chart race grows columns upward from the bottom. Columns suit fewer series and square or vertical crops better, while horizontal bars handle longer lists more comfortably.

Lancez le rendu de votre Race Column

Gratuit pour commencer. Aucune carte de crédit requise.