OT (sort of): Animoto

dragonseyewizard wrote on 3/17/2008, 9:03 AM
This site could put me out of the video business! ;-)

Watch a 30 sec. "Animoto Short" that I made for free using photos I uploaded and music from the site:

http://animoto.com/play/izGJ8jwLbnt2ruC2fvQMlQ

No two videos are the same! Videos can be emailed, embedded on websites (including blogs and social network sites like Facebook and MySpace), downloaded onto your computer or exported directly to YouTube. You can make, share, and remix as many as you want (30 second Animoto Shorts are *free).

Watch a 60-second video and a few samples here: http://animoto.com/learn_more

More info:
Animoto is a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos using patent-pending Cinematic A.I. technology and high-end motion design. Each video is a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and music with the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer.

*Producing a full-length video costs $3 and includes the ability to download the video to your computer. You may buy as many individual full-length video projects as you wish. An All-Access Pass, which allows you to make an unlimited number of full-length videos for one year, costs $30. With an All-Access Pass, you can download any of your videos, whether they're Video Shorts or Full-Length videos. (Animoto will accept images up to 5MB in size for each file, and music up to 10MB in size).

Randy
http://www.arrfdesigns.com

Comments

CClub wrote on 3/17/2008, 11:09 AM
I'm seriously going to give this link to the [non-] clients that call me up, want a mixture if their grandma's photos set to music, and freak out when I tell them how much it'll cost due to the time involved.
Coursedesign wrote on 3/17/2008, 7:14 PM
...freak out when I tell them how much it'll cost due to the time involved.

Why not just offer those prospective clients a Level 1 Video Package for say $250.00 or whatever you think they're able to pay?

Your own cost would be $30/year for unlimited videos, plus your time for scanning in the photos, and sucking the result off their web site and putting it on a DVD.

Level 2 is Custom Editing, with a sticker to match.
DJPadre wrote on 3/17/2008, 8:45 PM
Ive been in talks with animoto now for almost a year.

Afew things to note is that its not a standalone app, all images and music must be upladed to their servers for rendering.

They have been working on higher resolution output, however its still not up to SD DVD res.
Above DVD res was supposd to occure abotu 6 weeks ago, but it hasnt hapened yet.

Another thing to note is that due to the algorythms used, there is no way to refine these mixes. Sadly a standalone app is not in the books due to R&D cost, but i can easily see this kind of program take over from AE when ti comes to actual compositing of pictures for video.

IN fact, ive started using it for certain types of slideshows and usig camtasio to capture.
The biggest issue is compression frame rate, colour and of course res.