Thanks to Sarah Stewart, I’ve just discovered a really cool way of creating engaging video clips from static images. From the about page:
“Animoto is a web application that, with the click of a button, produces videos using images and music that a user selects. Using their patent-pending Artificial Intelligence developed to think like an actual editor & director, the resulting video has the emotional impact of a movie trailer and the visual energy of a music video.”
This is my first attempt and I suspect there will be many more in the future. Animoto let’s you pull images from online sites including Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, Photobucket and SmugMug or upload them from your computer. You can then upload music or make a selection from their online library. When you’re happy with the order of your images Animoto will render and process everything for you into a video clip.
Once processed you have the option to embed them in a blog or website (as I’ve done here), send it to your friends, even upload it to YouTube (which I’ve done here). You can also unlock additional options via pay-per-video pricing, or an annual fee for unlimited videos and downloads.
That’s great, Mike – it worked really well.
Looks a cool tool for promos etc – images + music – but it’d be great to have a good online ‘digital narrative’ type app that allows voice as well. I guess a voice over could be recorded and uploaded but it’s difficult to sync with images unless general. Also disappointing that the free version is limited to 30 secs but I guess we can’t have everything!
I use MP3 voice files alongside the $30 version . You can get a good impression rather than direct links between individual images and voice- success does depend on order loaded and I load duplicate sets of images
See below
http://animoto.com/play/moGj1D3OyOun6DEUWm1F8Q?autostart=true
Was quite pleased with this introduction to a student workshop
Hi Mary,
That’s an absolutely brilliant idea. A really nice way of blending visuals with what would have otherwise be a straight audio podcast. I found in watching your clip I was much more engaged that I am with standard audio podcasts, where I tend to move on to other work and the discussion relegated to the background.
Thanks for sharing the idea, I might try that myself at some point.
Cheers,
Mike
Hi Mike
Glad you like it that was what I thought. I wanted to do some podcasts for our students and they are becoming quite a cult here- all my colleagues are thinking about trying. The thing I like is the ease of doing it !
Best wishes
Mary