What’s Cool: Are you sick of boring slideshows and PowerPoint presentations but don’t know how to make creative ones using iMovie or FinalCut? Then Animoto is for you. Make your pictures come alive with this amazing and simple website application. Animoto takes your photos, text, and music and creates a dynamic and unique video presentation without you having to lift a finger (except your pointer finger).
Started by a bunch of TV/film producers and techies who used to work for MTV, Comedy Central and ABC, Animoto puts the power of professional-looking video in your hands. Once you sign up for a free account, you can start making dynamic videos by simply uploading photos to the site. Animoto gives you the option of either uploading photos from your computer or from photo websites like Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, Picasa, and Photobucket. Add as many photos as you want and arrange them according to your preference. You can even add text throughout the video to help break up and organize the photos.
Once you’ve finished uploading and arranging photos, you can then choose a song to play in the background. Choose from your personal music library or from their extensive music library full of indie artists. Whether it’s pop, indie, hip-hop, electronica, or classical, they have an extensive library to choose from. Animoto then customizes the video to that song style, energy, and rhythm to make the music compliment the photos.
After you have everything in order, simply hit the “create” button and wait for the video to render. Animoto uses their patent-pending Cinematic A.I. technology that randomizes each photo, transition, and effect, always producing a fully customized and unique widescreen video every time. Best of all, sharing them could not be easier. Videos can be emailed, downloaded, embedded on blogs and websites like Facebook and MySpace, sent directly to YouTube, or burned on a DVD (for $20 more). If you don’t like the way the video came out, you can always remix it to see another variation. The possibilities are endless.
What’s Not: Animoto allows you to create as many 30-second videos as you’d like for free, but anything more than that will cost you $3 per video or $30 for a year. If you’re a control freak, then Animoto isn’t for you, as you have no control over the look and feel of the final video. Also, high-res will cost you an extra $5 per video.
The Bottom Line: Animoto allows anyone with basic computer knowledge to create high-quality, unique video slideshows with little effort. Sharing your creation with your friends and family couldn’t be easier and the upgrade options are reasonable for such a quality product. Go play around on their website, create your own video, and be amazed. Your photo slideshows no longer have to be boring.
Official Site:
www.animoto.com
Our Rating:
