Animoto.com review

alexkidd

alexkidd

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Alex
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-- not sure if this is in the right place --

Well not so much a review but my experience of it having upgraded to the pro account

The quality of the editing is rather good and effects are well done however limitations i find crippling are:

there is a 10 minute limit on slideshows which is limited again by the track you choose so for instance the track you use is 5 mins long then it'll finish after 5 mins and there is no option to loop or add a 2nd track

finding a track that is 10 minutes long out of their selection is no easy task (i've not done it yet) as it's only viewable by genre such as romantic, latin, classical etc

you have the option to upload your own track however you have a 10mb file limit which frankly for a 10 minute song isn't great

the speed is either full, double or half speed, which is based on the tempo of your track, even using ave maria a slow classical track i've found it's still just too fast on half speed, i'd just expect a bit more control over slide speed but i suppose the render engine for the music/video won't allow this

basically for the £26 for a single month i've paid i'd expect a better level of service available with less limitations, i'd hope it'll improve however i probably won't be a subscriber when it does

i can see the uses of it but the reasons i'd pay the extra money aren't there, i'll stick to 30 second freebies from here in :(

hope that might be of use to anyone considering it and save you money you might not want to waste if it doesn't fit the bill as tbh the limitations aren't very well advertised at all and i feel a bit cheated and would hope to save anyone else the bother :)
 
I suppose it depends on the intended use.

Agree about the length of tracks, but I find 10 mins for a slideshow is far too long for most people to sit through anyway.

I think I read that it`s a simple process to download a couple of slideshows and join them together using any of the relatively simple and cheap video editing software/gadgets out there.
 
I'd say pretty much the same having gone to the pro subscription last week Alex.

Yes it's whizzier than pro show gold or pro show producer but the lack of control IS frustrating. I decided to test it by posting one on my blog to see what folks thought of it and there is a post in the nudes and glamour sections called "slideshow" where I posted it for some feedback and the kind folks who commented echoed my own thoughts on it.

It tends to overpower the actual images was the feedback which I agree with and I'd like to try it out on some different types of slideshows to see what folks think of it. (I'll do a wedding one soon)

The major benefit (for me) is that it takes no time to do in terms of the amout of interaction you need to have with the programme. PSG is very manual by comparison.
So I guess it's a case of time vs control?

Right now I remain, like you, unconvinced.
 
I have the full version, while I agree the time limitation is annoying, I found I didn't want the same music for all my images anyway. I make 3 or four 5 min movies from different parts of the shoot then download as HQ combine them into one DVD.

I do like the option of shooting video, it works extremely well, I have done 3 now where I have inserted video and it makes a huge difference.

Ali for me the problem was that with your video it was low res, the photography was stunning and I loved the images and in high res it would have fabulous.

I think my biggest issue is the time!! and should you make a mistake on the title (Like mis spelling your niece's name!!Doh!) it re renders the whole thing again! nightmare...

I have to disagree with the OP and IMHO I don't see it as a waste of money.
 
Yep that was a low res clip that I hosted on the blog and it was done deliberately as a test because it's that clip that would be hosted on FB should I have done that for a client :) testing, testing :)

It's the high res DVD that they would get but I wanted to test the facebookability of the low res version and it failed the good old TP quality control dept ;)

As for it all looking the same, well yes it does but if you are not a photographer and had never seen it before? That's the majority of clients so personally I'll test it out and see what the feedback is.

I'll be doing a wedding one soon and may actually try that at some wedding fayes in the autumn.

It's not so much a case of what I think of it, more a case of what clients think of it. :)
 
Understandably some people will like it however i just think with a bit more thought into the product it could be excellent, as it stands it's verging on mediocre for me :)

What are you using to link the two videos together btw nigey?
 
We sell quite a few of the slideshows to portrait/makeover clients - with the makeover ones we add a bit of video. If you have the music to do so (and it's pretty easy to upload your own, I have done it and I hate all things faffy) you can create a longer slideshow from your images by duplicating them - if you have killer shots you want to appear for longer, put them in 2 or 3 times next to each other.

They don't all look the same, sometimes I wish they did as sometimes I see an effect i really like, and then it doesn't pop up again for ages.

We produce 10+ of these a week, and sell 2 - 3 minimum a week at around the £200 mark. They're also an excellent giveaway for high spenders.

All that said, we had never produced slideshows before due to time constraints, and the typing a name in wrong thing is a killer!

A
 
Aye, i can see the benefit for short slideshows i just have issue with their advertising 10 minute vids when frankly it's rarely possible :)
 
alexkidd said:
Aye, i can see the benefit for short slideshows i just have issue with their advertising 10 minute vids when frankly it's rarely possible :)
Click to expand...

Fair enough. I like stuff that's popular with customers and makes us money. But we would pretty much never need a 10 minute video

A
 
I like it, and we do sell them/giveaway to big spenders, but I have issues with the quality of the DVD - the low res and high res mp4's are fine, but the high res DVD tends to make the images look unsharp when viewed on a large screen.

As I understand it, (and bear with me, this is way over my head) it is produced in NTSC (which is used in USA and hardly anywhere else) and not PAL. A cheapo DVD player wont play it.

We have a bit of a palaver to burn it, too - download the iso file (which wont play on the cheapy) burn the iso file to dvd (as I can't 'open' the iso to save the ts files) save the files from the dvd onto my pc, then burn these files onto another dvd which will then play on a cheapie. What a mission!

What does everyone else do? Does the iso file play directly on your dvd player?
 
Not tried the ISO yet but I found the high res MP4 was fine on the blu ray at home?
 
I download the ISO and burn it directly and play it on our dvd player, and it's fine. We've sold loads of these since last November and so far no one has reported a problem playing them on their dvd player. Although mostly I think people want them for digital photo frames.

A
 
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