Music video slideshow tool Animoto is venturing into new territory Tuesday night with an upgraded tool that supports video clips. Alongside photos, users can now upload videos up to 200MB in size, including segments that are in high definition. These exist seamlessly beside the photo content, and get the same Animoto treatment with transparency effects, reflections, and other eye candy.
Unlike the way Animoto handles importing photos from third party sites like Flickr, Facebook, and SmugMug, the same cannot be said for videos. If you want it to grab a video you've already uploaded somewhere else you need to track down the source file and re-upload it.
Another caveat--and it's a big one, is that you can only use 5 or 10 seconds of a video at a time, in clip form. This limitation is by design, and serves a few purposes. One is to keep a slideshow from getting muddled down in long clips, while keeping rendering times down on Animoto's side. It also acts as an incentive to upgrade to Animoto's paid service, which bumps the possible clip size from 5 to 10 seconds.
To help make the time limitations a little more feasible, Animoto has a built-in clip editor that lets users choose the 1 to 10 seconds they want to use from an uploaded video. Users just pick the start point, and how long they want it to run, and Animoto's servers do the rest. You can also choose to cut out the sound, as well as duplicate any clip. Doing this several times over lets users string together a series of segments from a larger clip to go beyond the time limitations.
Venturing into the realm of video editing is definitely an interesting move by Animoto. In a chat with me last week, CEO Brad Jefferson insisted that the tool was not headed in a direction that would let users control specific times on how long certain pictures were presented, or tweak things like total clip length--two things that are determined by how many photos (and now videos) users decide to use. "I don't like the idea of moving back to the timeline," Jefferson said. "The music is always going to determine how long (the video) is. We've always been about a really simple paradigm that doesn't get people thinking from a tool level."
That's not to say Jefferson isn't smitten with simpler ways for people to edit their videos before they're uploaded. Especially on the new iPhone, which lets users shoot a video, trim it, then send it in an e-mail, or places like YouTube. For now there isn't a way for users to send those clips to Animoto without first heading to their computers to download the file off the phone, but Jefferson envisions a future update that will take the computer out of the equation entirely.
Firefox 3.5 (for Windows, Windows Portable, Mac, or Linux) forges ahead with strong developer support, but most improvements for casual users will probably strike them as minor. See what's new for the second-most popular browser in this slideshow.
Animoto, the DIY-music-video-meets-slideshow tool, has released a new version of its iPhone app that brings it a little closer to its desktop counterpart.
Users of its paid premium service can now create and watch full-length videos right on their phone. Previously, users (both free and paid) were limited to 30-second clips consisting of just 16 shots. The new version allows you to create versions of as many as you want--or at least whatever photos can fit inside the length of the song you've chosen.
Anything you create on the iPhone can now be shared through Animoto.com and vice versa. So, if you've created something neat on your computer that you want to share while out and about, you now can. The app denotes videos made on the site with little A's that get stuck in front of the filename. And back on Animoto's site, there's now a special section in your videos list that separates the videos you've made on your phone into their own section.
The app also lets you download any videos you've created directly to your phone for offline viewing, which means you can play them back even if you're in the depths of a concrete bunker. This is by far the most important feature in an app like this, and something that should have been included in the very first version.
Future versions of the app may allow non-pro-users of Animoto to create one-off, full-length slideshows on their phones with in-app micropayments--something that's arrived with iPhone OS 3.0. However, that could take an additional paid version, since apps that started out as free cannot include Apple's in-app payment system. In the meantime, this version makes Animoto's $30 annual paid premium service a little more enticing for users who already have an iPhone.
Paying pro users can now create full-length videos, while everyone can download their creations for viewing offline.
(Credit: Animoto / CNET)
It only took Flickr four months to get around to it, but user-created videos now sit alongside photos as part of the widely-used slideshow tool.
Previously videos, which are still a beta feature for paying pro members, resided in their own island. If you were putting together a special set for a slideshow, you'd have to open up the videos separately. That problem no longer exists--much to the bemusement of vacation photo and video enthusiasts.
Flickr has also increased the presence of slideshows around the site, including where you can fire one up. This is most noticeable on search results and people you're not friends with on the service. The UI has also been improved to scale smaller photos and videos to fit the screen as it sees fit--something the company is calling "embiggening."
What might be the most useful improvement however is that you can now embed a slideshow outside of Flickr. There had been a handful of third-party tools to let you do this, but nothing official--or easy. You'll now find a "share" option on the top right hand corner of any slideshow, and you can grab that same code from within an embed too.
Below I've put together a small collection of photos and videos in case you want to give it a spin. Be sure to toggle the full-screen option (in the lower right hand corner) to have the photos scale to your display.
You've got to love Web kitsch. The YouTube tube socks probably still take the cake in my mind, but slide show creation tool Animoto's latest offering isn't too shabby either.
Twenty dollars gets your rave-worthy slide shows burned onto DVDs and sent to friends and family members. To go hand in hand with that, the service has also bolstered resolutions two-fold, bumping up the respectable 432x240 videos to 864x480 while simultaneously increasing the frame rate from 15 to 24 fps--the same as a movie projector.
The larger sizes come at a price though. The extra resolutions cost an extra $5, but can be applied to previously created shows. That extra resolution is most noticeable on big-screen TVs and computer displays. The company is making these larger videos available in one of two formats--an ISO file that can be burned straight to DVDs to be playable in set-top boxes (using a program like Nero), as well as a QuickTime MOV file that can be squirreled away on your hard drive or sent to friends using large file transfer and hosting services.
The folks at Animoto have put together a really useful head-to-head demo here, where you can see the standard versus premium videos right next to one another. Below is a still capture from the same shot.
Related: YouTube sucks: 4 sites that do video better
Five bucks makes your videos about twice as sharp as before, which is useful for big-screen TVs and wide-screen computer monitors.
(Credit: Animoto Productions)
MagToo is a service for creating really simple slide shows and interactive panoramic photos you can share on your blog or social-networking profile or by e-mail. To help put what you share into context, MagToo also throws in geotagging, letting you stamp any of the content you've added with a specific place where it was taken. Other users can then browse through the items on a large world map like they would photos and videos on Flickr.
Of all the tools my favorite is the panorama maker. While I couldn't get any of the three tests I did to look as good as the example shot, the site offers up a small guide to help get your panoramic-photo-taking skills up to snuff.
Like software that comes with some digital cameras, MagToo will take up to five photos across and several down and stitch them together into a single image. The final result goes into a small viewer that will automatically scroll back and forth, or let you casually pan around with your mouse. It's quite engaging, especially with large photos that have a lot of detail.
One snag I ran into is that it's nearly impossible to add other panoramics you've done into a single slide show viewer without first saving them as their own photographs, then plugging them back in. It's kind of irritating, but easily fixable. Otherwise get used to making panoramics one at a time. The panoramic tool also requires Internet Explorer, as ActiveX fuels the photo-stitching tool.
The service isn't nearly as jaw-droppingly beautiful as ViewAt.org, a geotagged panoramic photo viewer I looked at in September of last year, but it's far easier to compile casual shots into some really beautiful panoramic pictures. You could also just shell out for a DSLR with an $800 panoramic lens, but MagToo will let you get by with that point and shoot you can fit in your pocket.
(Via SociableBlog and MoMB)
I feel pretty.
We've covered in the past, glowingly, Animoto, a service that takes your photos and makes cool music videos from them. Everyone like music videos, right?
At South by Southwest next week, the company will officially roll out its Facebook app, which makes it easy to create a personal video from your own profile photos, which you can then put on your profile page and into your feed. What's extra-clever about it is that it integrates with Facebook's photo tagging features, and when you include a photo of a Facebook friend in a video you make, they get an alert, leading, CEO Brad Jefferson hopes, to viral growth that will spread Animoto across the globe.
Animoto only has 100,000 or so users so far on its destination site. It's a safe bet that the Facebook app will quickly outstrip that number.
The company provides its own music soundtracks, or you can upload your own. It then automatically selects videos and transition effects, and cuts them all into the music. It takes a few minutes before your video is ready, but the results are entertaining. The only other UI snag is that when you're selecting photos to include in your video, you get tiny thumbnails you can't zoom in to to see if they're good or not.
Animoto limits Facebook personal videos to 30 seconds. If you want longer vids, you'll have to go to Animoto.com and buy access -- either $3 a video (up to about 10 minutes), or $30 a year for unlimited spots.
The company's standalone product is a Webware 100 finalist in the publishing & productivity category (go vote!).
Narcissism, thy name is Animoto
See also: Slide, Rockyou, Fliiptrack.
The uses for the Flickr API never cease to amaze me. One of them that I've been playing with for the past week is Phrasr, a service that takes several words you throw at it and spits them back out as photos from Flickr.
You can individually change each photo to better suite the word. I found it to be pretty off the mark on most words, but spot on for others. Half the fun is exploring additional photos to get a better match.
When you're done selecting your photos you can then publish the phrase to everyone else. It goes in a public pool, and actually viewing the shot plays like a photo slide show, and clicking any of the shots takes you right to the photo page on Flickr.
Is it useful? Not really, but it's certainly fun, and would be great to mash up with Twitter.
Turn words into Flickr photos with Phrasr.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Did you know photo slide show service Slide.com is used to create over a million slide show widgets a day? With those slide shows comes serious business, pulling in a monster load of traffic. Taking a cue from that, photo host Photobucket has stepped up its in-house solution with a new slide show tool that's been significantly enhanced from the previous version.
Using some design elements from Flektor, which parent company Fox Interactive Media picked up alongside Photobucket in mid-2007, Photobucket users can now skin and theme their slide shows in various fashions to match the theme of the shots. As an added incentive to step up to the service's $25-a-year pro membership, paid users get an extra 20 shots on top of the 30 that everyone else gets.
Despite these new changes, I found the new slide show creation tool to be a little short on features. It's easy to skin the thing with one of the 20 new themes, but many of the themes don't offer control over transitions or skipping ahead through the photos. This might not be a big deal with a few shots, but once the number gets up to 50, it would be nice to have some form of navigation, regardless of what theme the creator has chosen.
I've embedded one of the new slide shows after the break. To check it out, click the pink "read more" link below.
The slide show editor is pretty simple to use, although it swipes a lot of look and feel from sister site Flektor.
(Credit: CNET Networks)... Read more
I was at a bit of an impasse earlier today while writing about the new Google Maps page that lets you see user adjustments in real-time. A video to show off the feature would have been overkill, while an animated GIF afforded the same view to readers at a substantially smaller file size. Not having Photoshop installed on this machine (which has a pretty simple animated-GIF-making wizard), and not wanting to go through a tedious multistep process using Paint.net, I turned to Gickr.
Gickr is a simple tool that lets you upload up to 10 files from Flickr or your PC and turn them into an animated GIF with variable speed control. The service is aimed mostly at social networking users who want to pack the most into their profile picture or photo galleries, but if you've ever been curious about making an animated GIF but have been put off either by some of the obscure special software required or complex how-to guides, then this is the tool for you.
Once you've uploaded your images to the service you can tweak things like how big you want the end image to be, and how fast it cycles through each picture. Gickr hosts the GIF for you, and gives you an embed code and the option to add tags to make it a part of the user gallery. The one limitation is that the service adds a little Gickr watermark to your image in the top left corner, even if you want to host the image yourself. That, and the fast transition speed is truly nauseating unless you're attempting to make a cartoon. I still enjoy its simplicity when compared with admittedly more powerful, but complicated standalone software tools.
