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.
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.
Been looking for a way to get a Flickr slide show on your blog or Facebook profile? Check out SlideFlickr, a dead simple tool for pulling in albums or photo streams in an embeddable slide show. Just drop in a Flickr username, or a URL for a group, photo set, or tag, and hit a big pink button. SlideFlickr will spit out some embed code you can plug into your blog, Web site, or social networking profile. If you're interested in a simpler solution, they've also got a Facebook application that lets you add your SlideFlickr slide shows by copying and pasting over an eight-digit slide show identification code. It will then place the slide show on your profile for everyone to see.
SlideFlickr's slide shows mimic Flickr's, with simple back and forth buttons and an upcoming stream of photos on the bottom. I've embedded a small one with some iPod Nano photos below.
Related:
Hands-on with Flektor's content creator
Weekend Webware: Slidez photo slide shows
Weekend Webware: Goodwidgets makes for snazzy photo sharing
VoiceThread is a photo sharing tool that launched earlier this month. It lets users upload photos from their hard drive or Flickr, and add voice and text annotations to each slide. These 'VoiceBooks' can be embedded in blogs, Web sites, or MySpace profiles. Other users can comment on each slide, with up to 28 comments per picture. The service is selling itself as a voice forum tool.
The VoiceBook creation process is handled entirely within one window, without the need to refresh or hop pages. It's pretty user-friendly, and adding photos is incredibly easy. In just a few minutes, I had managed to put together a small slide show of photos, using the 'import from Flickr' feature.
One really neat feature is the painting tool, which lets you do on-screen writing (like football commentators on TV) to match your voice narration. This is especially helpful if you want to highlight a detail or two on a complex photo. You can also pick the brush color, although to nitpick, you can't select it until you've started your voice recording. Users can also circle and doodle on your image with their personal narration.
Also neat is the photo navigation, which feels a little bit like OS X's Expose. Clicking the thumbnail button will zoom out and show you all the photos in the set. Clicking on any of them will zoom in again. Once you're viewing a photo, you can simply click it to zoom in. It's very intuitive.
ChinSwing (previous coverage) experimented with the idea of audio message boards. For all intents and purposes, quality comments to a photo can really enhance the viewing experience. On the other hand, you're likely to hear something you don't like, or come across some heavy mic breathers while browsing other people's work.
I've embedded a VoiceBook I made below.
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