Why Choose Animoto?
Details of One Software Choice
The Book Trailer Manual reviews about a dozen types of software. Some are online exclusively, some you buy and download to your computer.
BEST USE: Adding movement to a static, boring slideshow.
Animoto.com is an online software which allows you to create book trailers with great simplicity. They call it the end of slideshows because they take still images and animate them with zooms, and special effects such as fade-in, spin-in, etc.
Animoto Accounts
Animoto Shorts (30 second videos) are free and you can make as many as you want; you can’t download videos, though, only embed them on the web.
Animoto Pro allows unlimited any-length video and downloads.
Animoto Business removes the Animoto logo that are present in the previous type of accounts and gives you access to a much wider range of music; you can also resell videos made this way.
What Makes Animoto Special?
Animoto is based on a unique type of software which takes your images and music and mixes them by adding motion: zoom, pan, special effects as the images come in or go out of the screen, etc. If slide shows are boring because they are, well, static images, Animoto videos are just the opposite. They are full of motion. Frankly, I prefer something in between those two extremes, but Animoto videos are much better than static slideshows for most book trailer efforts.
Create Your First Image on Animoto
Images. Animoto’s free account allows a thirty second video, which is about 9-20 images. Plan for one of those images to be a text slide with the title of your book and one text slide for your Call to Action (what you want a viewer to do after watching your book trailer; for more, see this section of The Book Trailer Manual.) Gather your images into one folder to make upload easier and faster. Once you’ve uploaded your images, drag and drop until the images are in the order you want. Click on the T to add text slides and drag and drop to desired positions.
Music. Animoto has a music lounge that includes music they have already licensed for use in their videos. Music categories include Featured Tracks, Romantic, Top 40 Pop, Indie Rock, Electronica, Hip Hop, Singer/Songwriter, Latin, Jazz, Classical, Country, Gospel/Christian, and Oldies. You can choose from one of their songs or upload your own (mp3 format only).
Speed. Animoto can spend a lot of time on each image, or not much time. Choose a normal speed for the first time.
Let Animoto Work. Click to create the video and then, sit back and let them do the work. You can close the page; they’ll email you when the video is done.
Remix. One nice feature is that you can ask Animoto to remix the video multiple times until you get what you want. Try remixing at half speed and again at normal speed. Add or subtract images, or re-sequence them until you are happy.
Distribute. Finally, grab the code to embed the videos and start spreading them around. Here are some of my Animoto.com videos.
Tags: animoto, book, books, review, software, trailer, trailers, video, videos
August 24th, 2010 at 8:46 am
[...] learning software, I suggest you do a couple slide shows. The first should be on Animoto.com Read more on Animoto here. Animoto.com will give you an easy transition into the process and you’ll find out something about [...]