Friday, October 17, 2008
Animoto Offers Unique Editing Features for Slide shows
Animoto, is a new slide show program that boasts advanced controls and features not found on competitor's sites. Animoto was formed by an artistic group of developers that formerly produced shows for MTV, Comedy Central, & ABC, studied music in London, and played in indie rock bands in Seattle. The culmination of their creative minds is evident in the esoteric feel to the site,including the intro video.
For example, Animoto uses newly developed Cinematic Artificial Intelligence that analyzes your compilation of pictures and automatically orchestrates the presentation to synchronize with the song you choose for your soundtrack. Pictures are displayed in random,rotating manner in completely customized format. There's also a one-click remix feature to ensure that no two videos are ever the same. As the site says:
Each video is a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and music. Produced on a widescreen format, Animoto videos have the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer
Other perks users will appreciate include the option to automatically retrieve pics from your albums in Facebook,Flickr,Smug Mug,Picasa and Photobucket. Like most popular slideshow sites, you can add a soundtrack from your own collection of mp3s, but Animoto also provides an extensive library of music that includes many genres: top 40,indie rock,electronica,singer/songwriter,latin ,jazz,classical, but I didn't recognize most of the bands in rock or the singer songwriter genres.
I was disappointed by the fact that I couldn't upload a song from my Itune, but pleasantly surprised by the view on iPhone feature, which emails the video to you Iphone and view the video via Quicktime format. You can also export to Youtube and upgrade to DVD quality for $5. You can also get the embed code for an extensive list of social networks and blogging sites,including Myspace, Facebook,Livejournal, WordPress and Blogger and others.
As a member of Photobucket, Flickr, Slide and Remix America, I think Animoto can claim a few distinct features, but those features aren't app positive. The main downside to Animoto was the 15 picture, 30-second limit to each movie you create. There's a $3 fee for "extended play", which means, a movie that lasts more than the standard 15 picture 30 seconds. That's a major inconvenience if you're planning to showcase your favorite pics from the latest vacation, family reunion or a major occasion.
If you don't mind an annuual $30 fee, you can get the "All-Access Pass", which allows you to produce an unlimited amount extended play movies. There's also specialized formats: Animoto for Business and Animoto for Education, available in different packages and fees.
Posted By Matt O'Hern at 02:16 PM
Permanent Link: Animoto Offers Unique Editing Features for Slide shows
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