[Vincent Ferrari]

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/2...e-iphone-rocks/

"Yeah, I gush about Animoto (and so do others). And I'll keep on gushing because they are an example of a startup that just focuses like a laser on doing one thing well. In their case, it's creating slideshows for users from their photos. They just launched their iPhone application. Select 8-16 photos from your photo library, pick some music to play in the background, and it creates a slideshow for you on the fly. Watch it on your iPhone or email it to friends."

Animoto is one of those things; you either love it or you hate it.  Me?  I think it's stupid.  Sure, it's great that you can make a slideshow that synchronizes with the music you choose, and it's definitely a lot of fun to watch all the wacky transitions they use that add that "over produced MTV feel" to everything, but as far as I'm concerned transitions should be minimal.  If you've ever watched an Animoto video, it's like visual vomit.  Tons of transitions slapped together so that you're spending more time watching how the photos transition from one to the other than you are looking at the photos doing the transitioning.

[Vincent Ferrari]

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/2...e-iphone-rocks/

"Yeah, I gush about Animoto (and so do others). And I'll keep on gushing because they are an example of a startup that just focuses like a laser on doing one thing well. In their case, it's creating slideshows for users from their photos. They just launched their iPhone application. Select 8-16 photos from your photo library, pick some music to play in the background, and it creates a slideshow for you on the fly. Watch it on your iPhone or email it to friends."

Animoto is one of those things; you either love it or you hate it.  Me?  I think it's stupid.  Sure, it's great that you can make a slideshow that synchronizes with the music you choose, and it's definitely a lot of fun to watch all the wacky transitions they use that add that "over produced MTV feel" to everything, but as far as I'm concerned transitions should be minimal.  If you've ever watched an Animoto video, it's like visual vomit.  Tons of transitions slapped together so that you're spending more time watching how the photos transition from one to the other than you are looking at the photos doing the transitioning.

[Jason Dunn]

I think Animoto is pretty fun! Flashy transitions help compensate for boring video content because, let's face it, we're not all going to have lots of exciting, dynamic footage.

My problem with Animoto is their bizarrely expensive pricing model...$3 per video, but it's not even DVD resolution, you have to pay another $5 for that. Or you can pay $30/year for unlimited videos, but not DVD resolution - each video in DVD resolution is another $5. And there's no option for HD video content at all. These guys are out to lunch with their business model in my opinion - who would pay that much for personal videos? I just can't see their service getting really popular until they drop their prices a heck of a lot and/or license their technology to video and photo sharing sites. It would be cool to have Animoto technology offered as part of Smugmug for instance.

[Vincent Ferrari]

Originally Posted by Jason Dunn

My problem with Animoto is their bizarrely expensive pricing model...$3 per video, but it's not even DVD resolution, you have to pay another $5 for that. Or you can pay $30/year for unlimited videos, but not DVD resolution - each video in DVD resolution is another $5. And there's no option for HD video content at all. These guys are out to lunch with their business model in my opinion - who would pay that much for personal videos?

You don't need a business model when you have Michael Arrington shilling for you and Leo Laporte talking about you like you're the greatest thing in the world. Oh, and didn't Jeff Bezos invest a metric buttload in them also?

The product is good, just not for me. I think it smacks of someone who just got a new video editing app trying out all the transitions in one project. The movement of it is cool and the synchronization with the music is neat, but honestly, I was horrified by how busy and cluttered the whole thing appeared when the finished product was rendered.