Fwd: Animoto Tutorial

Animoto is an online service that can be used to make short videos.  They have a ton of premade video templates and music scores.  Although you can insert short (only 3 seconds with the "lite" plan) videos I think animoto works best for making a video out of images and photos.

They have 3 "plans."  

I highlighted some of the features below: (color coded green=pro, red - con) :

Lite

Free

30-second videos

Low quality

Small slection of templates

Plus

$30/year 

10 minute videos

Pro

$249/year

up tp 20 minutes

In my opinion a 30 second video is worthless and so  is Animoto unless you want to spend the $30 for a year.  There are better programs to edit videos and make slideshows from pictures, but this one is  extremely fast and the results are very professional.

Here are the steps to making a video (after you have joined and selected your plan)

1.  Hit the "create" button

2.  Choose your template (note: many of the great ones they show are only with the pro plan).  They will preview the video.

3. Hit the "create video" button

4. Click the + to add photos (up to 300 with plus) or text

5.  Photos can be uploaded directly into the video from your computer or your social media accounts (a great feature) 

6. Move the photos into a different order by dragging them and add text using the + button

7.  Click on the musical note to change the song from their selection.  

8.  Hit Preview video to preview.

9.  Type in the title and date and hit produce if you like it.  If not edit again.

10.  Wait (it takes a few minutes to "render") and export to your youtube account or other social media or download by hitting appropriate button.

Here is a video it took me less than 5 minutes (closer to 2) to produce of a short album of beach pictures I loaded from my facebook account.

Have fun!

Alison