Comments on: Animoto Now Available For Commercial Use

By: Dennis Copper

Dennis Copper — Wed, 27 May 2009 05:31:55 +0000

As noted in the “Terms of Use”, when you stop paying your annual business membership you must cease using any and all commercial videos that were ever created with that account.

Do Animoto for Business members realize that they must pay $249/year EACH AND EVERY YEAR moving forward in order to legally continue using any videos they ever created with their account?

A one-time fee of $249 for a year of making unlimited videos is reasonable. Requiring $249/yr for the life of the video is a financial challenge to small businesses.

By: Stuff we like! | CREATE.

Stuff we like! | CREATE. — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:39:58 +0000

[...] Animoto Now Available For Commercial Use [...]

By: Roundup: A vintage Bill Gates rant, A123’s grid ambitions, Japanese browsers and more » VentureBeat

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:25:20 +0000

[...] video creation for business — Animated slideshow creator Animoto has begun offering its video creation tools for business use, on a subscription basis. The company’s last product launch was a Facebook widget we reviewed [...]

By: I'm Me

I'm Me — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:59:33 +0000

Agreed with 15… What a strange way to usher in a new writer (since I’m assuming that’s what it is). A site like this is too smart to steal directly from another blog and call it a “guest writer.”

But anyway… this is a gimmick. Sure, it looks good. But I have serious doubts about its viability long term. What happens when every slideshow looks like this? It’ll become pretty obvious immediately that you’re just a cheap bastard.

By: Ghaus

Ghaus — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:51:03 +0000

It is too expensive !

By: Andrei Potorac

Andrei Potorac — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:54:25 +0000

This looks GREAT! I wonder if the tech used behind this is just Flash/Flex.

By: Ukrnet

Ukrnet — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:32:22 +0000

Wow! It’s really cool! I like Animoto

By: Marc Hustvedt

Marc Hustvedt — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:12:10 +0000

Wow, what an odd way to welcome in a new TC blogger. I know who wrote this.

By: Enterprise Alley mobile edition

Enterprise Alley mobile edition — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:12:05 +0000

[...] low and behold, today, Animoto goes commercial offering the business the licensing and quality assurances it needs for more professional styles of presentation. Pricing is in the ‘petty cash/cab [...]

By: Thy Sok

Thy Sok — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:12:24 +0000

WOW! This is outstanding. Thanks for the info.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:44:09 +0000

nm, they’re doing this with pictures, so you wouldn’t need an AV filter, you’re applying this to 1 frame across a timeline. I still say somebody should fund an FFMPEG plugin so the rest of us can apply this as well. It doesn’t seem very hard if you have the time.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:40:28 +0000

You know all those sites that have their own youtube functionality with ffmpeg?

If people just wrote some effects filters for libavfilter we could run uploaded video through ffmpeg filters for these type of effects before converting it to FLV.

Why shouldn’t every video upload site have this same functionality?
It’s just an token effect anyway. As to where and how the AV the filters are applied, that can be handled by a simple algorithm.

I can’t afford to have nice libAVfilters done, so if you can fund this so all websites can have this very same functionality let me know and I’ll put the jobs up on oDesk. Where are the rich philanthropists when you need them?

By: JR Sower

JR Sower — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:31:38 +0000

For being only a 2 year old company, it sounds like a high growth company. Their choice of partnerships suggests they are catering their services to a wide range of clients, as well as a small focus on vertical markets. How does a company like this survive an economic recession? http://www.read...ex.php?RTA=web2

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:28:07 +0000

@8, Mike must have found a GPL blog writing robot to add to his crunch network.

Animoto is nice, but the effects are repetitive and beyond the initial wow value, it doesn’t seem to have a lasting effect for me.

That’s the problem with all automation. It will never be as unique as that person tweaking their video in final cut to upload to youtube.

By: Crunch Now Dot Com

Crunch Now Dot Com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:26:16 +0000

and your the one to speak guest commenter!!

http://www.crunchnow.com

By: Guest Commenter

Guest Commenter — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:05:38 +0000

Wouldnt it be nice to have articles without anonymous authors, especially on techcrunch?

By: raj

raj — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:05:25 +0000

Except that with a professional, you won’t have to keep paying him/ her to keep embedding the video. And you have to keep the Animoto logo – something a business might not want to do.

Unless their explanation is just poorly written, I’ve understood the terms to mean that if you pay for a commercial license, make a video, embed it, then let your license expire, you can no longer use that video. Again, maybe it’s poorly worded, but I take it to mean that even if you upload the video to YouTube, you still have to keep paying.

What I’m looking forwards to is being able to remove the Animoto logo and seeing an API.

By: Al

Al — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:39:04 +0000

Adding video would be great too. Can you add narration over the final video?

By: DVD video from Animoto : NevilleHobson.com

DVD video from Animoto : NevilleHobson.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:30:23 +0000

[...] (Via TechCrunch) [...]

By: Carlton Northern

Carlton Northern — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:28:40 +0000

This is a truly great service.

By: Steven Finch

Steven Finch — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:25:04 +0000

It is really good to see that Amazon are still going to let this startup they just acquired grow. Animoto is a great idea and because of the amount it is being use, could be great for promotion in terms of music. Im really looking forward to seeing this grow!!

Steven – http://crenk.com

By: Mark Poulson

Mark Poulson — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:09:53 +0000

Wow I wonder how competitors like WellcomeMat and Mixpo are going to deal with this, especially if Animoto tunes up its editing features. Definitely cheaper and easier to use than Mixpo and the quality is infinitely better than the lot of them.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:01:47 +0000

Cool stuff. I tried the “consumer” version a while ago and it’s definitely cool.
But I’m curious to see if the potential customer base for the professional version is that broad and diverse.

The video effects are gorgeous, but you don’t really have a choice (besides the music), they’re selected kinda randomly.
As a professional, you may want to get more editing features, like choosing your style or whatever.

By: Mark Newman

Mark Newman — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:56:36 +0000

Wow – Animoto really knows what they are doing. That presentation is just as good as one that would be made for up to $4,000-5,000 by a videographer.

A market they might want to think about going after are school tv stations – everybody remembers their friends being newscasters on the school news during homeroom in junior high/high school. This could change their world because right now they are stuck buying expensive technology to build all of this –

Nice video -