Dr. Z Reflects: Animoto

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Animoto is AWESOME!

Creating a mash-up anytime soon? Watch the video above before reading any further.

Animoto may well be your tool of choice.

Animoto is an online video production application that was released in 2007. It is simple and effective. Animoto has turned video creation into a 3-step process:

Upload photos/videos - You upload the files from your computer.
Select music - Selecting music is easy. They provide a wide selection of music licensed under Creative Commons. This means that the artists WANT you to use their music for free as long as you acknowledge them - and Animoto does. You can also upload your own music if you wish.
Process the video - Now it's time for Animoto to select the transitions. Then it scrambles and cooks your video into a tasty media jewel.

Control freaks don't need to go completely off the handle. There are Video Tools that allow you to rearrange the clips/photos as needed. You can add text as slides all unto themselves. If you don't like the transitions, you can click the 1-Button Remix button to have it re-mash your photos (I have a re-mash at the end of this posting. It is the same photos in the same order but the transitions are different.)

Best thing is that you can share it from the Animoto website or through social media, email and even YouTube or SmugMug. Yes, you can even download it as a standalone video file. If you don't want to deal with any of this, they will mail you a DVD for $22 which seems a bit overpriced.

This program isn't designed for creating your typical educational video because it doesn't appear that you can overdub a narrative. Never-the-less, if you want to share a bunch of video resources. This is quick, easy and good quality.

Bernie Dodge tweets that they use Animoto for creating a curricular music video in the Tech for Teachers class at San Diego State University.