It’s now about two months since I was told about Animoto, when I attended the New York Web 2.0 Meetup Group event. I had a quick look, then put it aside while I dealt with a few more pressing matters.
Animoto is a web application that automatically generates videos using the New York based Animoto Productions company’s Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology that “analyzes and combines user-selected images and music with the same sophisticated post-production skills & techniques that are used in television and film”. Even if you take that, as I do, with a grain of salt, the actual experience is great fun and may well offer a way for small business owners to produce promotional video content without that having to cost an arm and a leg.
The application takes still photos you have on your hard drive, adds music you provide or stock of theirs from which you can choose, and then puts together a video for you. For a very short one, there is no charge.
Leah Maclean’s post last week Even YOU can have video for your business gave me the first example of someone I knew testing the product. I have great respect for Leah’s combination of geek and practical business person, so I was impressed by her opinion that “this leaves YouTube for dead when it comes to small business possibilities”. And you can see the result of Leah’s own experimentation with Animoto at that blog post.
Incentive enough for me to try it out myself.
The result will not be nominated for Cannes, but it was easy - just find photos on the hard drive and upload them, as they are. No tweaking or adjusting required, or trying to comprehend esoteric technical instructions. Definitely point and click.
Here’s the result. Comments welcome. And if you think it’s really bad, I’ll just do another one.
Why not try it yourself? It could help make your website or blog really stand out from the crowd.
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Jason here, one of the founders of Animoto. Thanks for the nice words about our service… deserving of a Cannes film-festival nod, perhaps not. But nice video nonetheless.
Take care,
Jason
What a great job with a very interesting technology. Its something that adds that extra something to a blog, Network page or website.
Great clip Des! Glad that I could be the big toe that got you into this one.
I’m curious how you might use this as a tool with coaching clients?
@Jason - thanks for the comment.Can’t wait to do some more and develop some skill at it!
@Bill - agreed: it’s just so easy and you know I don’t like things to be technically challenging
@Leah - thanks: I can easily use this in coaching people, to show them how readily and economically they can start upgrading their online presence without having to, saving your presence, become propellorheads
[...] shows off an app that makes web videos out of your photos. Love the music [...]
Great stuff. Thanks for the tip. How long did it take you to create all this?
What a great idea..! I’ll definitely be playing around with this one - thanks for the heads up!
Cheers,
Martin.
[...] & Easy Video for Your Site I just saw this post on Des Walsh’s blog which talked about a great service from [...]
Thanks for sharing. It’s also a coincidence that I just published my latest blog post about video marketing. Video marketing is also one recent medium used in getting home business traffic and websites are flooding the Internet with home videos and clips produced by everyone. I will be checking animoto out that’s for sure.
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