Animoto, the startup that lets you automatically build custom music videos starring your own media, just got even more awesome. Tonight the site is launching support for video, which means you’ll be able to generate customized music videos featuring your home movies, along with photos and music, with almost no effort required. We first previewed the new feature last month, and now the company is opening it to everyone.
The results are impressive, with videos that sport professional transitions that match whatever backing music you’ve chosen. For proof, check out the video below showing off a typical day at the TechCrunch office — it looks great, but it only took around five minutes of work.
Video editing can get tricky fast, but Animoto makes it easy by retaining the same kind of simple interface that’s made the site such a breeze to use with images. Here’s how it works: you upload the images and videos that you’d like to include in your movie, and the site displays a grid of thumbnails that you can drag and drop to determine the order they’ll be displayed in the final cut. You can select which portion of each video clip you’d like to include (up to ten seconds per clip) using an intuitive slider interface on the right hand side of the screen. You can also add text during this portion of the process, and choose if you’d like the audio of your video files to be muted or played over your movie’s background music. Choose a song from the site’s library, or upload one of your own, and you’re done. The entire process only takes a couple of minutes from start to finish, though it can take a bit longer if you decide to do a lot of tweaking. You can watch a video showing the process from start to finish below.
Once you’ve finished the layout of the video, Animoto processes it, using technology like beat detection to match your image and video content to the music that’s playing in the background. The rendering process takes around five minutes for every 30 seconds of content that has to be rendered, so this can take a little while depending how long your video is, but it’s hardly unreasonable.
The new feature is great, but there are a few things that might frustrate new users at first, like the limit of ten seconds (five for the free version) that can be shown from an individual clip before Animoto inserts a transition — you can include as many clips as you want, but they have to be short. CEO Brad Jefferson says that Animoto does this because TV broadcasts rarely include more than ten seconds of uncut footage unless they’re of an interview, so the limitation helps ensure that the videos retain a professional feel. That may be true, but I won’t be surprised if some people grow frustrated about it anyway. There is a roundabout way to include longer chunks of footage that involves duplicating one clip and placing it side by side with the original, but the process isn’t very intuitive.
Animoto is making the new feature available for free to new users, but only for videos a maximum of 30 seconds in length. If you want to make anything longer (and you will), you can pay $3 for a full-length music video, which can be up to 10 minutes long, or become a member for $30 per year, which lets you make as many videos as you want. If you’d like to get a high-res version of one of your videos it will cost $5 for a download, or you can pay $20 to get it shipped on a DVD. Note that all of these prices are consistent with what Animoto offered for its image-based videos — there’s no additional charge for video-enabled movies.
Aside from the new video feature, Animoto has been doing very well. We recently learned that the company has been cash-flow positive since late last year and just raised a $4.4 million funding round. Jefferson also hints we will be seeing some of these features make it to the company’s iPhone app, though he declined to share any details.
@ the video of TC HQ, load of time wasters, all of you
.
its not really like that most of the time. really.
It seems that as cool as the videos are that one can make it’s a short period of time before audio track scrubbers look for something to take down i.e. Peer Media Technologies, Dtecnet, etc…
Has anyone in this space tried licensing songs or encouraging video creation with a revenue share between the music artist, video creator, and a small fee for the hosting/enabler of the video?
No, no one in this space has ever thought about licensing songs or doing revenue shares or collecting fees for hosting or enabling services. I am glad you thought of that. I will mention it to other people in the internet space.
Look troll…
I was pretty damn proud of my high school reunion video and the Van Halen track was exactly the right mood music for it. I’d have given a cut to anyone involved but the technology just didn’t exist.
As such, after it got enough views the Facebook and YouTube audio scanners ripped the background music out and/or just took it down entirely. Complete loss. The moment and the memory of what was… destroyed.
The lesson? Create a cool video, share it with others, and see it ruined for future viewing because fair use was stifled.
I also think you owe me an apology for your sarcasm.
What? YouTube allows you to add licensed music to uploaded videos.
A few months ago TechCrunch covered a similar service called Stupeflix.
We put something together real quick using Stupeflix, then put in the final touches with iMovie.
Uploaded to YouTube and searched for a “car” theme song which was about 50 seconds long.
Perfect match! Here was the result:
http://www.yout...h?v=-Wyix9izzQE
Good luck on this. Congress has to do some major revision to copyright law that would make this possible. A great idea though, and a new way for the artists to make money, too. The problem is wording in the law. If you put music to ‘motion picture’ then you have to have permission to do so from everyone in line with their hand out. The record company, whoever owns the mechanical license, the actual writer and composer of the original track, and so forth. A total nightmare!
Animoto is very good. I like it.
Animoto is a very cool, very useful service. big fan.
Clipgenerator does this already for over a year.
They now have flash based clientside rendering on their facebook app. http://apps.fac...ipgenerator_two
Another Animoto fan here! Great webservice.
It really is easier to use then MovieMaker.
Been a subscriber for over a year now. I love animoto. Glad they finally added video capabilities.
Shameless self plug of recent ski video with Animoto mixed in. Animoto rocks.
http://vimeo.com/6187847
Are your non-video picture only files uploading to vimeo as HD? I noticed your video was but my last two picture only uploads have not done HD even though they are 1280×720. Sucks
animoto is pretty cool. Went to marriage last weekend and they had presentation of pictures done in animoto. great stuff!!
You could do this with the Grouper client back in 2005.
what about mashing up tv clips? putting them to music??
I wish them good luck on this, but the vast majority of people will not take the time to figure it out. Too many other easier or professional alternatives. Why don’t people change their own oil? Easier to go to Jiffylube.
Thats what i call an office environment!!!
ANIMOTO is awesome, thanks for plugging them.