What can I say? I’m a music video genius. Check out my latest MTV-worthy video above. It took me, oh, about five minutes to slap together.
Actually, it was all done for me by a startup that is getting a lot of buzz called Animoto. The New York City startup recently won an award at the South by Southwest conference, just launched a great Facebook app, and is one of the partners using YouTube’s new platform APIs.
Animoto lets you grab photos from Flickr, Facebook, Picassa, Smugmug, Photobucket, or your desktop. You can then upload a DRM-free song or choose from about a hundred licensed tracks on the site. It then does its magic and matches the photos to the music, “mimicking the post-production done by professional video editors,” says CEO Brad Jefferson. I mashed together some old Fllckr photos from a trip to Korea and a visit to HP Labs, added an Electronica beat, and the video above is what came out.
The site is built on top of Amazon’s Web services, but many customers wanted a post-to-YouTube option. So using the new APIs, Animoto now offers a button that does just that. “We view that as marketing tool,” says Jefferson. (It makes no money from videos shown on YouTube). Animoto also has a Facebook app that lets people create videos inside Facebook made from their Facebook photos. Since many of the photos are tagged with the names of the friends who appear in them, everyone in the video gets an alert in their News feed telling them that they are in a video.
The site’s been out of private beta since August, 2007 and has gathered 100,000 registered users. Unlike many other video startups, this one is not basing its business on advertising. Creating a 30-second video is free, but longer ones cost $3 each (or $30 for an unlimited annual subscription). CEO Jefferson says he’s been pleasantly surprised by the conversion rate of non-paying to paying customers. Instead of the one to two percent conversion rate he had expected, it is in the “high single digits.” If he can get up to a few million active users, and keep the conversion rate up, he might have a business.
So, aside from the integration with other sites and the option to upload it to youtube and make it look crappy, how is this new or different than the photo player that imeem has had for the past year or so?
Didn’t TechCrunch already write about Animoto? I agree, it’s a great service.
I don’t get it. Why do i need/want this?
This is perfect for online art exhibitions… We will be uploading our art content catalog along with some mp3s from the hip hop groups we sponsor for a perfect fit!
Nice, clean tool for the youtube generation. Will do well.
@3 - You need friends to share photos/videos with first.
I just tried this (my full length video is “producing”), the UI was clean, easy to understand, and imported my photos from Facebook beautifully.
A+ web app.
Rob G, go give it a try and you’ll see. Nothing like the photo/video sites out there. It actually reads the music and splices the whole thing together depending on the type of music and the pictures used- all to the beat. All comes together very professional. I’ve been hooked for awhile, great to see it on TechCrunch!
Just tried animoto and I really enjoyed the finished product. Easy, simple, and a great finished product.
I’ve been waiting for Animoto to get TechCrunch coverage. To me a app or site is not fully legit till it gets TC coverage. I’ve used Animoto for a month now and it rocks. Very easy to use and makes your pictures more meaningful. You put pics with great music and put an mtv twist to it and it can make a boring picture come to life and make you cry.
The only downfalls is that it takes very long to upload pics and produce a video and it can’t use music you bought on itunes. Other then that it is one of the best apps out there. It would take me 80 hours to do what they do in 30 minutes.
Hey, why is there no “share” or “embed code” in the player?
Brian De Palma, Alfred Hitchcock, Spike Jonze, Erick Schonfeld…I ran into Animoto CEO Brad yesterday and he sounded really stoked. This explains why - cool stuff.
Nice service and looks like they have it right with their business model. Good Luck!
Love Animoto, and I can easily understand such a high conversion rate, I was about to pay!
Is it suppose to be blank, or is it a trap?
embed not working in FF3
Animoto does rock. Many of our real estate agent members are using it for neighborhood shows.
We used Animoto to remix our agents’ photos: http://realbird.typepad.com/ne.....visit.html
lamerz.
Congrats to the Animoto team. I saw them present at the Plug and Play Tech Center not too long ago. Glad to see them get Techcrunch’ed!
Great… just what the internet needs, more ways to be filled with sub-par content.
Animoto in the hands of myspacers = assault on people’s eyes and ears.
You people need a life. “To me a app or site is not fully legit till it gets TC coverage.” When I clicked the link Techcrunch I thought I was going to a news article about some new pressure for the IT industry. This site might have some interesting news but to base decisions solely on what you read here is sad and stupid.
I’ve been on the net for about 14 years now. I have never heard of Techcrunch. Found it by accident. I’ve never been to face book and I have watched a total of about 7 videos off youtube or similar sites. I chat and e-mail my interstate and international friends and invite my “local” friends over. The only use I can see for animoto is to produce more of those annoying Intro animations that front so many websites nowadays.
Hey Brent, not just sub-par but completely useless or annoying, bandwidth and time wasting.
It might have a use if you can produce these clips in full screen and save then to your PC.
I suppose the same idiots that watch videos or TV on their tiny mobile phone screens will love this too. Anyway I digress time to get back to the real world.
actually I like this service. I am actually thinking of using this for preparing video presentation on my kid’s 2nd birthday.
Seems like a very good mix of tech and entertainment. They must be having some good algorithms scanning thru the binaries and figuring patterns.
Also these guys provide ways to get data from and post to other popular sites using their API.
Overall, a simple, neat and a complete service. Good work.
Yes it will contribute to many, many more videos and hours wasted by an addicted myspace generation, but that’s only because it’s an excellent tool and very easy to use.
And to Craig, there was no internet before TC so I don’t know what you’re talking about.
*cough* Craig’s a loser *cough*
Um…one little tiny detail that may have been overlooked in the Animoto business plan…..
Universal, EMI, Sony/BMG, and Warner Bros. will come knocking very very shortly…especially considering this TechCrunch coverage….as uploading a song to anybody’s server for public playback would constitute copyright infringment of master’s and publishing rights to the tune of roughly $7,000/per track uploaded.
The Animoto founders may want to ask Mp3.com, Bolt, iMeem, and countless others about the mind-numbing testical-removal process that will undoubtedly be greeting them in the mail soon from those happy music industry fellas.
quite a handy tool i think, many people need a simple app that they can use to create sime kind of a video or animation from the photos taken at picnic last weekend, nowadays things like that are counted cool:)
yaaaaaaaaawn. fliptrack (www.fliptrack.com) is better.
I just tried it out. This is so cool. I loved my video. I don’t understand what’s not to like.
Love this service. I used it when posting craigslist ads looking for roommates. Turned my bland condo ad into a full blown chateau offering.
To all the doubters and haters — I created this in 10min… sent to me family, my wife’s family and few friends…. ALL with positive responses.
http://animoto.com/play/XrnX1dj1G5epDJlaHLDIqQ
@30, you’re a donkey. Don’t post links to nauseating family videos on TC.
@30, dude your wife is hot. How did you do it?
I just checked out fliptrack and it’s clearly kitsch. Not as cool. I can’t agree with you 27.
Animoto’s AI program ain’t what’s it cracked up to be otherwise it
would have placed the groom (in #30) far far away from his dish of a wife…
At Shawn #10 - you get the embed code for your video after it is finish being made.
This is a great tool, especially for promoting your service/ website on sites such as YouTube and Facebook. And if nothing else, it is a lot of fun.
Here is the finished work, took less then 5 min
http://animoto.com/play/cjQ1BriXvomX61QBJCMF5w
@32 - skills. Mostly Facebook apps and CSS. Ya dig?
It is an awesome service, I actually used it on my site as well when I came across them a couple months ago. For the type of stuff we deal with, the indie/electro/club/hipster stuff, it’s an awesome fit. The editing style and everything worked really well.
http://www.grooveeffect.com/po.....from-y.php
#30 - you are my hero.
Also - Animoto appears to suck. I’ll do this for anyones photos for $2.99. For Ryan (#30) its free). Thats a $0.01 savings.
#30… how the hell did you get that girl… i’d work day in and day out to get a wife like that and post it here to show her off to the world
My God!! This is totally addictive… actually, I’m already addicted. This website does a impressive work!! In less then 20 min I already have 3 videos kkk and one went to facebook, the other one to youtube and one I just e-mailed a friend. The only thing that is missing is that we should be able to upload short videos… it would be really cool!! Oh, by the way, I tried with Firefox 3 and it doesn’t work. It worked fine with Safari.
filters galore!
you may have some filters but i got much more!!!
I’m not interested enough to make my own video but I’m curious: does animoto read Media RSS feeds, or can you really only use photos from the short list of sites mentioned in the article?
Impressive service.
Just upgraded my account and creating now a video for me and my girlfriend.
I’m sure she will love it!
I am a freelance photographer and find the Animoto product a great way to quickly introduce prospective customers to my photography style. You can check out some of my Animoto vids on my website.
Why, muvee has been doing this for some time now, and they do this for *both* videos and pictures. And they have over 150 styles to boot. Everything from ya MTV to olde sepia tone charlie chaplin stuff. I tried their Urban style and it rocked..made me look like a dirt bike hero.. I just bought a HP notebook and it was sitting pretty, preinstalled! which is a nice surprise since they are also in the new LG Viewty phone. Animoto is like…er 6 years late? check out http://www.muvee.com or search for it on youtube.
Looks good to me. As time goes on I`m sure they’ll add more features, so it will become even better.
And if you’re worried about music rights… just go to http://www.sellaband.com/shop/artist/mandyleigh/ and download the free mp3’s. I`m sure they don’t have a problem in you using their music for your non-commercial video’s. Actually, I don’t even think the majors would care too much, as long as you aren’t making money from the music.
Speaking of which - off topic, but what are the best ways to get DRM-free songs for not too much money? Google is one big jungle for this question.
I’m addicted to Animoto. Once you get started - you can’t stop!
It is really a nice one. Just took a quick one and check it out here: http://www.bluepal.com/#video.
There could be few improvements made like editing the images with special effects, editing the rendering part if needed, etc. Good job, guys. Keep going!