A new online photo service, Animoto!

DSLR noob · Sep 17, 2007

I just discovered Animoto and it rocks! I am part of a monthly photography email thing called photojojo (google it) and they sent me a pass for a full length video at Animoto ( www.animoto.com ). Normally it's $3 for every full length video, or $30 for 1 year of unlimited full length videos. It's free for anybody to do 30 second or less videos though. It is described as "a music video for your photos" and is very hard to explain without seeing it yourself, but it;s MUCH better than a slideshow. Here read the description I got from Photojojo.

Photojojo said:
Picture 487 of your Jamaican vacation photos fading by as some Caribbean muzac plays in the background. Yeah, photo slideshows can be kind of a snore.
The solution? Animoto!
Think of it as a little black box filled with film & TV producers, techies, indie rockers, and robots.
You put your photos and a song in one end, shake it up, and a photo music video pops out the other end with pro-level post-production, animated cuts synced to your musics beat, and oh-so-much style.
And it only takes a few clicks. (Really!) The robots do all the work.
The 30 second videos are free and theyre perfect for mailing to friends or posting to your blog, MySpace, Facebook, etc. Longer videos cost a few bucks.

here is the video I made using my one-time free pass (mazdameet, girlfriend, and ski trip):
http://animoto.com/play/37f07f1933b4e268955573dc4f5fab70

Nein-reis · Sep 17, 2007

Thats awesome, can they make it full resolution for DVD? Might be a neat idea for wedding clients.

DSLR noob · Sep 17, 2007

I think you guys should make a few 30 second videos and post em up!

Nein-reis · Sep 17, 2007

Heres a wedding test I did:

http://animoto.com/play/f12443728802352b958d43177dd82d2d

If they offer this in HD for DVD, I'll sign up and offer them with my wedding packages.

Nein-reis · Sep 17, 2007

This would also be an awesome stand alone app. I would pay a pretty decent price for it.

DSLR noob · Sep 17, 2007

Yeah. Somewhere on their site it says "if you are uploading on to a DVD, we recommend that you resize images to be at least ' ' ' ' by ' ' ' ' pixels large." I think it's one of those features that isn't out yet, but is scheduled for later release. Good little wedding short.

AnimotoRebecca · Nov 16, 2009

Hey,

Just seeing this thread now. Animoto's a sponsor of TPF, so I thought I'd say hey and answer your questions. We do have DVD-Quality upgrades (and will have HD next year most likely).

You can check our DVD-Quality at:

- Animoto: Standard vs. DVD-Quality -

As for your note about wanting us to be a standalone product, unfortunately that isn't possible since it takes a tremendous amount of power to render these vids frame by frame, so we have to outsource that to a farm of rendering computers (getting totally dorky/technical here) to do that.

However, you can always burn your vids to DVD for re-sale purposes.

Nein-reis said:
Heres a wedding test I did:

animoto - Tyler Davis Weddings 2

If they offer this in HD for DVD, I'll sign up and offer them with my wedding packages.

photographyfanatic · Nov 30, 2009

Here's one I did for a band.

AnimotoRebecca · Dec 4, 2009

Nice vid!

photographyfanatic · Dec 6, 2009

Thanks! I was very pleased with it and so was the band. It's gotten some awesome feedback.

DSLR noob · Dec 6, 2009

Haha thanks for replying Animoto(Rebecca), at the time I posted this, you guys hadn't become sponsors yet(to my knowledge), and your service was pretty new and had a lot of features disabled. I was really excited to tell everyone, and now I am glad you are still doing well and I am happy to see the features have all become extensive and function quite well.

msf · May 30, 2010

DSLR noob said:
Normally it's $3 for every full length video, or $30 for 1 year of unlimited full length videos. It's free for anybody to do 30 second or less videos though. It is described as "a music video for your photos" and is very hard to explain without seeing it yourself, but it;s MUCH better than a slideshow. Here read the description I got from Photojojo.

Is that pricing old or are you still able to get individual videos for $3? I just looked on the site and the only thing I see is $40 a month or $250 a year. I would liek to do a few of these, but not enough to justify $40.

msf · May 30, 2010

I think I found the answer fo rmyself. I signed up, and it seemed to only have two choices, $40 a month or $250 a year. I hit pricing details at the very bottom and it seems you dont have to choose either of those, if you choose nothing you have a free basic account. And you can get full length videos for $3. Sweet.

Now to find unlicensed songs again.

msf · May 31, 2010

Now I find myself wondering if I should watermark the images I use in these videos or just my logo in the corner of each pic or nothing at all. the free ones are not hd so im thinking I dont need to put an ugly watermark on the images. Im just wondering what everyone else here does.

DSLR noob · Apr 3, 2011

I don't do my work professionally or get too worried about rights so I can't say much about the watermark, but I would agree that the free membership quality leaves the worry of the images being stolen and used as still images against copyright behind.