Animoto is a new web application, which promises to make
creating
impressive web presentations in a fraction of the time it would take
even the best slide show editor.
This is the first online tool to make this sort of
presentation possible in such a short space of time. Animoto allows you
to automatically generate professionally produced video, each a
customized orchestration of your images and music.
As you’ll see below, I was able to make stunning video
presentations in a matter of minutes. Stop whatever you are doing and
check this out!
Animoto, which just launched before this weekend, offers all
this in
a package that is easy to use, simple and straightforward for both the
technically-savvy and the novice alike.
The interface is a no-brainer
and the basic functions available in this first early beta version are
already quite impressive.
The first time I used Animoto, I was able in less than 10
minutes to
produce an impressive audio-visual presentation that was immediately
ready and usable for many kinds of online promotion.
Animoto Cinematic
Artificial Intelligence analyses the music you select to use for your
video presentation and magically matches image transitions and edits to
it to your visual inventory.
Anyone I sent the test presentations I did
during my tests was very impressed by the results and asked how I had
done such a swift editing job.
Animoto creates actual wide-screen videos out of your selected
sets
of images (from your hard disk or from image-sharing sites) and with
your preferred music in a matter of minutes and in a completely
automated way.
I haven’t seen a tool that doesn’t anything even close
to this before.
Animoto is free for registered users creating 30-seconds clips
(unlimited use) and costs $30/year for unlimited use which allows the
creation of clips of any duration.
Here the details:
The 60 seconds low down on Animoto
Get a one-minute introduction to
Animoto
from the very guys who have been working one year at creating it. But
beware, you can’t do everything you see in this clip with
Animoto.
What is Animoto?
“Animoto
is
a web application that automatically generates professionally produced
videos using patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence
technology and high-end motion design.Each video is a fully customized orchestration of
user-selected images and music.Produced in widescreen format,
Animoto videos have the visual energy of a music video and the
emotional impact of a movie trailer.“(Source: Animoto)
The Interface
As I have said already, the Animoto interface is well designed
and
gets no special negative criticism from me. This is how I expect
web-based tools to be designed.
I am not referring so much to the “style”
but to the architecture of the design. Simple, organic, well
integrated, non-threatening.
In fact, I have got around to use Animoto in no time at all.
There
is no such things as a learning curve, and overall learning time (if
you read this review first) is no more than 15-20 minutes even if you
want to find out everything that this tool can do.
Animoto additionally provides quite a bit of help tips and
indications on what each function does and on how most operations can
be executed.
How It Works
On the road, Animoto works seamlessly offering you three basic
gears with which to cruise on any type of presentation terrain.
1) You decide what images you
want to use in your
audio-visual showcase. You provide such images to Animoto either by
referencing accounts and photo-sets you may have already created on
popular photo sharing services like Flickr, Photobucket or Picasa.
Or by
directly uploading your locally saved images to the Animoto engine on
the fly.
2) You select the music or audio soundtrack you
want to use.
Again, your task is as simple as selecting one of the cool license-free
ready-soundtracks that Animoto offers in its own library, or by
yourself uploading your preferred music track.
Obviously, if you intend
to publish your Animoto show later on the Internet you better select a
music that is copyright-free or you will run into some trouble.
3) Animoto mashes it all up in a matter of
minutes
and spits out a ready to show audio-visual presentation like probably
no other you have seen before.
Yes, all you see is a progress bar
showing you at what point the rendering of your video is (no time
estimate is yet displayed) until the show becomes available and ready
to be played.
Two types of video presentations can be created:
A so-called Animoto Short (a 30-second video) or a full-length
video
(extended length video). Video shorts are free for everyone and you can
make as many of them as you like.
Full-length videos can be of any
length and do require you to pay a fee for either each video produced
($3) or for a one-year full pass ($30).
To test all functionalities of Animoto I bought I full-year
pass and
dived into testing and analysing the whole service during this past
weekend.
Here is the first video presentation that came out of Animoto
after my very first test:
Key Features
The Animoto features set is rather rather simple, making the
tools
immediately easy to use and master.
As already outlined, these features
include the ability to add any number of images from your hard-disk or
from a number of pre-selected online image-sharing sites as well as the
ability to use your music or audio soundtrack of choice.
The rest is
almost completely automatic. You press a button and Animoto produces a
new audio-video mix.
Some unique small features add an extra layer of
sophistication and
point to future additions that may indeed make this tool even better
than what it already is. These include:
a) Spotlighting. The spotlight
feature, which
allows you to interactively select a number of images in your show that
you want Animoto to give a special visual emphasis to. Super-easy,
super-effective.
b) Effective multitasking. As
all other web-based
applications Animoto takes advantage of the fact that the heavy work is
taking place on its servers and not on your computer to provide you
with the ability to carry out other tasks while your video presentation
is being executed.
While Animoto crunches on your images and music by
deciding what effects and edits to use, you can go ahead and view some
of your other video clips, select new images or audio for another remix
or even start producing another edit while the first is still
completing.
c) Select soundtrack starting point.
This is a
truly cool and nifty feature which allows you to manually select at
which exact point to start the music soundtrack you have
selected.
Many
songs start with some dead time or with a build-up that you might not
want to include in your Animoto video.
With the song Start
Point Slider,
you can tell Animoto where to start your song. Press ‘PLAY’ and wait
until just the right moment; then press ‘PAUSE’. This feature works
only when you create full-featured videos.
d) Easy distribution. Animoto
video clips can be
easily emailed, can be embedded into blogs, web pages, or social
networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
e) Fast, fully automated audio-video synch
editing.
Once you’ve selected your images and music, Animoto is able to analyze,
plan, produce, and render your video in about 5 to 10 minutes.
Obviously time will vary depending on how many images you’re
using and
whether or not there is an heavy load on Animoto servers.
Images Management
Uploading or referencing already web-published images is a
breeze
with Animoto. The system allows you to select multiple images to upload
at once (by using the traditional selection-key modifiers Shift and
Control keys).
Not only. You can easily delete,
move around and
rotate any image by simply selecting it and clicking on one of the
relevant functions appearing below the digital image light
table.
Also
here, multiple images can be selected at once and modified in just one
click making the preparation process very efficient.
In Animoto you can use any image saved in JPG format. The
maximum file size accepted is 5MB per image.
If the photos stored on your computer have a very high
resolution
(more than 1 MB in size), you may want to downsize them first to reduce
upload time if you plan to make videos to share online.
Animoto
recommends downsizing to no less than 640×426 (or about 50kb per
image), and to avoid uploading images with resolutions higher than
1024×768 (or about 100kb per image).
This highest resolution is in fact
only advisable if you want to produce video presentations that you will
want to master and distribute via a DVD.
Animoto currently supports direct image
retrieval from Flickr,
Facebook, Smugmug, Picasa, and Photobucket.
Music and Audio Management
The Animoto system supports audio files in the following audio
file
formats: MP3, WAV or AIFF’s. Maximum file size for music tracks is
10MB. Keep also in mind that for full-length video presentations it is
the length of your music that determines the total duration.
“Unfortunately, if you’ve purchased any music from
Apple iTunes and
it’s in .M4A format, you won’t be able to use it with Animoto. Right
now, .M4A files can only be used with iTunes and other Apple products.“
In Animoto you can use the music you want,
but if
your final video presentation mash up needs to be publicly published
online it is recommended that you utilize your own music (I mean music
you have written and composed yourself).
Or you can flex to the idea of
going out to one of the several open-license
online music resources where you can find
some great copyright-free tracks for your show.
The cool aspect of working with Animoto is that also music
selection
has been converted into a no-brainer task.
By providing a full music
lounge in which pre-selected license-free music tracks can be easily
listened to and added, Animoto provides a stress-free solution to the
less technically savvy in getting a music soundtrack that can
immediately fit their needs.
For now the Animoto Music Lounge offering is grouped into
three different music styles which can be easily navigated.
You can listen to each track listed and select the one you
want to use with just one click.
Sharing and Syndication Features
Animoto clips can be immediately shared with all of your
contacts
via an integrated email invitation facility that sends out invites to
watch your video (with no need to register) or by providing a
professional widget capable of generating embed codes for the most
popular blogging platforms and social
networking sites.
Doing it is as easy as clicking the option you need and
filling out
the invite or copying and pasting the code. Noting could be easier.
Free and Paid Versions
Animoto lets you work and create two types of
video
depending on whether you are a free user or you are willing to pay a
very modest fee to eliminate any possible limitation from your Animoto
production abilities.
Animoto Shorts are 30-seconds in
length and free
for everyone. You can produce, remix, and share as many as you’d like.
Here you can’t really use the soundtrack starter point slider, and you
can use generally a maximum of about fifteen images.
Free users can also create a full length video presentation
with no
time limitations but they can only do/keep one at a time without
needing to pay an extra fee.
Producing a full-length video costs $3,
and you can buy as many full-length video credits as you want.
An All-Access Pass, like the one I have bought, costs $30 and
allows
you to make an unlimited number of full-length videos for one ful year.
What do the results look like?
Here a couple of extra examples of what Animoto has been able
to
produce given a basic set of images and one of the tracks available in
the Animoto Music Lounge.
Robin Good remix 2 – extended version
VlogCamp Memories
Animoto Pros and Cons
Pros
Great presentation production tool.
Given the
production quality and time required to obtain such results this tool
has presently no competitors.
It does provide truly tangible and
immediate benefits to private entertainment as well as to presenters,
communicators, online publishers, marketing professionals, and trainers
(just to name a few) in many different application areas.
Cost-effective. Can’t ask for a
better business
model. Give me something cool and useful for free. If I like and want
to do more with it, have me pay a very affordable one-time ticket or an
extended all-access flat fee.
Saves you tons of time. Animoto
doesn’t pay me to
write this stuff, but I honestly think that I have never seen a tool
that allowed me to create such visually impacting and
professionally-looking presentations in the short time than Animoto
does.
It makes great promotion for whatever you are
showing. That’s what I noticed. Everyone watching is
left the lower jaw down and everyone says “wow” at the end, followed
by: “Cool Robin, how did you this?“
No two videos are the same. When
you work with Animoto each time you produce a video, this is different
from all others you have created before.
Cons
Music and video syncing while
often spectacular
leaves something to be desired in terms of precision. I have a feel
that if the Animoto guys can get that to work better results will be
even more impressive.
Can’t title the final output.
This among other
small limitations is probably among the most important ones.
Having the
ability to add some titles, to appear either at beginning and/or end of
the clip would certainly be a very welcome feature that could allow
greater ownership and personalization.
Can’t edit video title and description
after having
produced it. This is quite inconvenient and as YouTube teaches it is of
the essence to be able to go back and correct errors, mistakes or to
add other relevant reference information.
Full screen not working. The full
screen display
feature does not yet work properly for me whatever browser I chose.
This is probably a limitation the Animoto guys are already working on
and should be fixed very soon.
Ability to better identify an image uploaded
from a
similar one. Once you have uploaded/retrieved all images you want to
use in a video presentation, it would be very useful to be able to
click on each one and see its filename/filesize/datelastmodified info
fields.
In my case I was bogged down in fact by several images I had
in
my folders that existed at different resolutions. When uploaded to
Animoto, I could easily delete duplicated but I couldn’t tell which one
image I was deleting (the high or the low resolution?)
Limitations in image selection options
when using
on external photo-sharing sites. For now you can’t use tags or open
searches on Flickr to select the images you want to use.
Probably this
has been done to avoid having users utilizing copyrighted images
without care, as otherwise it would have been very useful to be able to
use a wider range of images than just those in your account.
My advice
to the Animoto guys is to offer an option that provides direct access
to all CC-licensed images on the partner services.
Download feature yet not available.
Of course it
would be lovely to be able to also download your final production but
this feature, alongside Apple iPod-formatted downloading is not yet active.
Ability to add your own voice track.
In my opinion,
this could be another great additions, allowing me to superimpose my
own voice to the clip once this has been mixed and prepared by
Animoto.
An extra-pass to let me comment, sing or narrate the video
presentation
could really make for the icing on this tasty cake.
Automatic submission to major video sharing sites.
I may be completely wrong but this would be another killer feature for
Animoto.
Either in partnership with one of the existing services
providing this ability or via a unique proprietary gateway would give
Animoto users interested in levering its unique viral marketing
potential enormous opportunities.
Editor’s Final Comments
I am very excited by the excellent work that the
Animoto guys have done
in the last 12 months while working outside of news radars reach. This
is a small company with a clear vision and some impressive tool ready
to use.
This is a beta product and admittedly there are still many
rough
corners even in the coolest of the tools. I haven’t found many and the
ones I have pointed to do not certainly hinder the tangible benefits
that such a tool can immediately offer.
My suggestion is to give a
little more time to these guys, as new cool features and upgrades will
make Animoto even better than it already is.
As you can see by yourself by looking at the clips I have
produced,
what Animoto can do is quite impressive and, assuming you had the
talent and the tools, it would have required several hours if not days
for you to create something similar. At least until yesterday.
Thanks to Animoto, anyone can NOW
create a splashy,
visually impacting presentation, no matter what is design or visual
communication skills level.
For travel agencies and independent web
publishers alike this is a super promotion and marketing tool that
while new, can give you some notable edge in presenting, promoting or
simply augmenting your latest content offerings.
Originally written by Robin Good for Master New Media and
entitled: “Visual
Presentations: Create Stunning High-Impact Video Presentations With
Effects And Music Automatically – Animoto” on Monday August
20th 2007. Some Rights Reserved.
