Testing the possible interesting potential of the Animoto web application, we've just put together this 30 second show reel with some screen grabs of the works produced by the IS Learning Team which can be seen here.
By using this web application it’s possible in a few minutes to edit an interesting video clip or show reel with a batch of photos selected and uploaded by the user. The free account only allows short length video, with 30 seconds of video (which includes a selection of 14 to 15 images aprox.), but by $3 the user can produce a full length video, with considerable amount of photos. In both versions the users can also either upload or choose from an available sound gallery the soundtrack to include with the video.
For now, the Animoto video editing features don’t allow any kind of control in the random transitions and effects in each image, but the user can easily submit the any created video clips in Animoto to be randomly re-mixed, changing this way the transitions between each photo included in the video clip.
Being a potential tool for creating contents to include in social networking sites, the video clips created by the users can be easily exported to website such as Blogger, TypePad, Facebook or iGoogle. Alternatively the video clip can be embed in any other website using a embed code widget, generated by Animoto for each film, similar to the one used in video sites such as YouTube or Qoob. The only problem is, as far as I understood, that there is no way of getting the created video clips as a download to the user’s personal computer, with all these being stored on Animoto’s servers.
As referred in the previous post, Google already showed some interest in this video clip web application (as confirmed in Animoto’s blog a few weeks ago), to be used as a widget in OpenSocial, which the big G is creating in partnership with MySpace, meaning that really soon there will be new developments in Animoto.
Keywords: Animoto, IS Learning Team, Resources, University of Nottingham