I love discovering new techie tools, but it’s not the techie tool itself that excites me. What excites me is how I can use it to be creative. I find new ones all the time and the list got so long that I had to create some qualifying questions to make decisions about them. Otherwise I might never be seen again in the real world. (Just kidding.)
The questions I ask myself to make a decision about a newly discovered technical tool are:
- Is it going to be fun? (Has to be fun or next, please!)
- Will it support my creativity? (A no-brainer!)
- Is it easy to learn? (Or does it have too steep a learning curve?)
- Is it going to complement another technical tool I already know how to use? (Not absolutely required but definitely a plus.)
- Is it relatively inexpensive? (No matter what the cost, will I get enough use out of it to make the price a non issue?)
- And finally, do I just get an intuitive hit about it? (Never underestimate this… intuition is almost always accurate.)
Today I’m going to introduce you to a technical tool that was a resounding yes to all the above questions.
Animoto is a tool for making videos with still photos, video clips, text and music, all blended by their technology into a montage with all the energy of a movie trailer.
Who are the people behind Animoto? Well in their own words, “Animoto Productions is a bunch of techies and film/tv producers who decided to lock themselves in a room together and nerd out.” Love their sense of humour.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words…or in this case a video, so you can see one that I created here for my Voice of Destiny Music site.
The music I used is original music from one of my CD’s, so there’s no copyright issue. They ask that you not use music you don’t have permission to use. That would include anything that’s not on their site or anything that’s not your original music. They do however have a lot of royalty free music already on the site.
(In future posts I will give you some great sources for both free photos and places to buy a license for music. Stay tuned for that.)
There are three levels for Animoto customers:
- Basic which is free and allows you to make an unlimited number of 30 second videos
- An All Access Pass which is $30 a year and allows you to make an unlimited number of full length videos
- A Business Level which is $249 a year and allows you to make an unlimited number of full length videos of DVD quality for commercial use
Other Features
- The first two levels are branded with the Animoto brand. The Business level allows you to display your own brand instead of theirs.
- Each time you edit and save, the video is different. Each one will be saved in your account.
- You can embed the videos in your website or upload them to YouTube.
- The All Access Pass and the Business Level let you set the tempo of the images at regular speed, half speed or twice the speed. (My video is half speed.)
Try it out by clicking on the image. (It is an affiliate link.)
And have fun!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow – I just watched your Voice of Destiny video – what an amazingly touching piece. It brought tears to my eyes.
Thanks so much for sharing it, and for the link to Animoto. I’m definitely going to play around with this fun ‘techie tool’ and try integrating video onto my blog in the future.
Abby,
Thank you! And have fun with Animoto.