I read about Animoto, a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos and high-end motion design several months ago, and somehow forgot about the site shortly thereafter. Then recently, I read about the Beta and was dying to try it out.
Animoto promises to create videos with a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and music. The videos are supposed to have the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer.
Since I had some free time last Saturday night, I used it to upload my personal photos to the Animoto confabulator (my word, not Animoto’s). All the while, I had the excitement of a child — the glee of a 7 year-old who just discovered a new red truck. I was going to create my very own music video, show it off to all the tech neophytes I associate with, and demonstrate my technological prowess to them.
As I uploaded each photo, I began to write the first draft of this Blog post.
‘Animoto is an incredible innovation and will undoubtedly push the advertising industry onto the balls of its feet. Small, independent advertising agencies beware…Animoto is here!’
Not so fast my friends.
After taking forever to upload my photos, compress them, render them and do whatever else this application needs to do to make these ‘so-called’ fabulous videos, here’s the message that was returned to me:
Call me a gluten for punishment, but I tried 3 more times to upload my photos and create a video only to receive the same message over and over again…’your video has exploded’. What does that mean and, more importantly, in this day and age, how could you not follow-up with me via e-mail to explain the problem and tell me when it’s fixed?
Needless to say, I’m not convinced Animoto is taking over the advertising industry anytime soon. In fact, I think they have a lot of work to do to make this application viable to the masses.
If any of you have had positive experiences with this site, please let me and this readership know so I can provide a fair and balanced perspective on The Third Place.
Stumble It!
Hey Brad,
This is Tom, one of the guys over at Animoto. Thanks for the candid post! I looked into your vids for you and yeah, you’re right: you caught us at a moment when we were changing some stuff in our render engine and a few vids were lost in the cracks. Sorry about that! They’ve all finished successfully now.
Incidentally, I noticed you used a really slow song for your videos, so only a few pictures were used in the final video. If you want more pictures to be used, pick an upbeat song (or a faster section of that song) because the motion designs are totally synchronized to the music you choose.
Hope all is well and that you have a better second experience with us!
Thanks,
TOM
I like Animoto, but for the last week or more i have being sending mails and leaving phone messages with no luck, i hope Tom reads this and can get in touch with me to my mail
fernandoelias@atomofilms.com.pe
thanks
Brad,
We’ve experimented with it in our PR office and I’m pretty happy with it so far. I did a post on it which outlines some strengths and glitches at http://www.higheredmarketingblog.wordpress.com
Dennis
I have also seen the ‘your video has exploded’ message. After making over 100 videos, i have only seen it a few times. It sounds to me like you used it on a bad day. My observation of the beta thus far is exactly that… Bad days. I will make numerous videos with no problem one day, and the next i will deal with extremely slow upload times, and yes, the dreaded video explosion now and again. They do not always email you when this error occurs, but if you click feedback and send a complaint, they are quick to help a paying member. In all i would say it is an excellent start, although i would agree they have work to do. Give it another shot. Also make sure your pictures are Low Res.
Yeah, the same thing happened to me. Video Explosion on my first video! I was extremely happy to use this program, but there seems to be a lot of problems that still need to be fixed.
Also, the images are very difficult to move around if you have a lot of them. I had some images at the top of my video and I wanted to drag them down, but they would only go down like 4 rows at a time… very frustrating… I wish the page with the images was larger so I could see all of the icons without having to scroll down.
I got a quick response via email notifying me that the video is now working. Good customer service. My only problem now is that I can’t seem to figure out how to move more than 1 image up or down in the list. Right now, I have to manually move the images 1 by 1.
Okay, so here it goes. I guess they have a feedback forum, because having a standard forum would be filled with undesired.. Hopefully they will take a professional stance and get this working, instead of saying “we are working on it.”
So, I have uploaded photos (under 300, under 5 megs, and a song THAT I HAVE USED BEFORE AND NO, ISNT CORRUPT) as they have stated here.
(Response: Did you use your own song for this video? More often times than not, a video explodes due to a corrupted mp3. Try doing an Editing Remix, switch the soundtrack and see if that does the trick.
Take care,
the guys at Animoto
— Now — The song (mp3) has been used before and has worked. And now it doesn’t? I ran it through Adobe Soundroom as I do edit and work on music files for several DJs on sidework. Uploaded STILL an issue.
I then tried another song which worked for a friend of mine on Animoto as well recently. This did not work either. So now I have 4 videos sitting here (claiming to be worked on) and no resolution. YET they want 99/249 for the year for a product that isn’t working.. Come on now!
I recently stopped by to this site and got to take some time to say many thanks for the excellent skating tips and hints!