Animoto :: Thinking Home Business | Practical Tips For People Who Work From Home

I made a short video on Animoto to see how long it would take

My experiment last week with Xtranormal

Last week I made a short video using the online Xtranormal tool. While it was fun up to a point, I decided it was a tad too beta for me to use right now for any business-related purpose.

Comparing with Animoto

Inevitably, I was comparing it with Animoto, which I first heard about late in 2007 and then posted about here, just over two years ago, with a very basic test video.

The comments on the post last week about the Xtranormal service prompted me to revisit Animoto last night and do yet another quick video, just by grabbing some images from my computer and selecting some music from the clips on offer from the Animoto site.

No Oscar for this production, but what might be of interest to others was how long it took, namely about 30 minutes. But about 20 minutes of that was searching for music – I think there was a *lot* of music there for Valentine’s Day. In the event, I picked something for the sound and ignored the title “A Night in the Park” which was not really spot on for a video featuring daytime beach scenes.

Both my previous experiment in 2008 and this one were done using the 30 second free version. After all this time I am seriously thinking of throwing caution to the winds and taking out a full access for one year subscription for the princely sum of $30.

A few of the things I like about Animoto:

* you can use their music or yours
* uploading images is easy (next I’ll have to try their video upload)
* sharing to YouTube was just a click (also in Xtranormal except it didn’t work there)

I’m thinking of some smart ways I can use Animoto, e.g. to kick off a couple of presentations I’m doing over the next couple of weeks. For that I’ll probably need to make that move sooner rather than later, from cheap (as in, free) to paid.

Why not create your own video slideshow at animoto.com?

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.