Animoto to Finally Offer HD Videos Come Next Week?

[Jason Dunn]

<p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1295283583.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>Former Windows Phone Thoughts editor Jonathon Watkins, now a <a href="http://www.photoglow.co.uk/" target="_blank">full-time professional photographer in the UK</a>, attended the <a href="http://www.swpp.co.uk/convention" target="_blank">SWPP (Society of Wedding &amp; Portrait Photographers)</a> conference in London a few days ago and had a chat with folks at the <a href="http://animoto.com" target="_blank">Animoto</a> stand. He mentioned he was hoping for the service to upgrade to HD and was surprised when he was told that would happen on the 25th of January. The service will be 720p and initially only the Animoto Original video style will be HD enabled. The Pro styles will be upgraded next followed by all the other styles in due course. Animoto have also tweaked their server farm so the renders will now run 10x faster. There is no plan to charge extra for the service according to Watkins.</p><p>I've written about Animoto before, and way back in <a href="http://www.digitalhomethoughts.com/news/show/89744/animoto-now-offering-dvd-quality-videos-for-5.html" target="_blank">2008 I was scratching my head</a> over how they could possibly charge $5 for a standard definition video and offer no HD options at all. Now, almost three years later, they're finally offering HD video, and their pricing is <a href="http://animoto.com/pricing" target="_blank">$5/month or $30/year</a> - but the video only 720p. That's good, but why not 1080p? Will they offer 1080p when we're all using quad HD TV sets? I've never signed up for an Animoto account because without HD output, there's no point, and while 720p is dramatically better than 480p, I'm still puzzled by Animoto's refusal to offer 1080p video to people who are paying for their service. This does mean, however, that Animoto will have something that <a href="http://web.photodex.com/signup" target="_blank">ProShow Web</a> doesn't offer for $30/month...HD video output. I was disappointed when Photodex launched ProShow Web with the same SD video limitation that Animoto has rather than one-upping them and having a real advantage to using their service. Worth noting is that ProShow Web's professional-grade service ($150/year) offers 1080p output.</p><p>I personally think most people would be better off spending $69.95 once and buy <a href="http://www.photodex.com/products/proshow/gold" target="_blank">Photodex's ProShow Gold</a> - you can output to 1080p that way, and have great control over your projects. And with the <a href="http://www.photodex.com/products/proshow/gold/features#wizard" target="_blank">new project wizard</a>, you can get amazing results in just a few clicks.</p>

[Jonathon Watkins]

I subscribed to Animoto Pro quite recently, so was pleased to hear about this. I didn't know about Photodex's ProShow Gold. Perhaps it's best that I didn't, as I'm a perfectionist and if there was the chance to change *very* aspect of a slideshow, I might just use it........ ;-)

Out of interest, how long does a 1080p video with 100 photos take to render and on what sort of machine? I.e. how much horsepower do you need to throw at ProShow?

I think I will have a closer look when my Animoto subscription runs out. Till then I look forward to 720p, I suppose. ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

Out of interest, how long does a 1080p video with 100 photos take to render and on what sort of machine? I.e. how much horsepower do you need to throw at ProShow?

I took 100 photos and two songs, rendering a slideshow that was 12 minutes 2 seconds long, and it took about 35 minutes. ProShow leverages all four cores, and hyperthreading, but it doesn't yet have GPU acceleration. That's a 1080p MPEG h.264 video at 13mbps in quality. The computer is a Core i7 overclocked to 3.6 Ghz.

Don't forget to factor in the time required to upload the photos when doing a time comparison. :)

[Jonathon Watkins]

I'm not forgetting the upload and download time. It's a pain. ;-)

I'm building a Sandy Bridge machine with a 2600K and 16Gb of RAM and plan to clock it at 4.6Ghz, so I think I could improve on those render times. ;-)

When I build the machine I really need to download the trial and give it a go. Tempting....

However, I get royalty free music with Animoto as part of the payment. I won't get that with the stand alone software, so I will need to budget a subscription to something like triple scoop, won't I?

[Jason Dunn]

I'm building a Sandy Bridge machine with a 2600K and 16Gb of RAM and plan to clock it at 4.6Ghz, so I think I could improve on those render times.

I'm curious, what are you going to do with all that RAM? Unless you're running a Virtual Machine, it's mostly going to go to waste. A system with 8 GB of RAM will output JPEGs from Lightroom just as fast as a system with 16 GB. That CPU sure sounds nice though. :) I had my system running at 4.2 Ghz for a while, but opted to clock it down to 3.6 Ghz so I could use quieter fans...you can barely hear when it's running now.

However, I get royalty free music with Animoto as part of the payment. I won't get that with the stand alone software, so I will need to budget a subscription to something like triple scoop, won't I?

ProShow Web has a collection of Royal Free music - I don't know if it's as big as Animoto's, but that's a good point! The desktop software doesn't come with music.

[Jonathon Watkins]

I tend to have Lightroom and Photoshop open at the same time and I soon hit 8Gb of usage. I thought 8Gb was extravagant, but when you have a shoot of 1200 21 Megapixel images, it sure comes in handly...... ;-)

Lightroom really seems to chew up memory. I'm on the latest version, so I don't think it's a bug. When running thought lots of images, every few seconds counts, so £120 investment into an extra 8Gb makes sense.

Hmm, I think I need to look into tripplescoop's licencing terms. What do you use for music on the desktop version?

[Jason Dunn]

I tend to have Lightroom and Photoshop open at the same time and I soon hit 8Gb of usage. I thought 8Gb was extravagant, but when you have a shoot of 1200 21 Megapixel images, it sure comes in handly...... ;-)

Hrm. How are you measuring usage? As in, how do you know you're hitting 8 GB of usage? You're not looking at the Performance tab and looking at the Free memory field, are you?

I don't have an especially large Lightroom library - I export shoots as stand-alone catalogues when I'm done processing them - but right now in Lightroom I have about 2400 images in my library and it's using up about 700 MB of RAM. It goes up and down but I rarely see it use more than 1 GB total (this is measured by the Windows Task Manager and the Memory use under the Processes tab).

Other apps I have open:

CyberLink PowerDirector 9 = 577 MB
Photoshop Elements open with 10 images in it = 417 MB
Picasa 3 = 108 MB
ACDSee Pro 3 = 31 MB

This system has 6 GB of RAM, and I've never been able to use up that much memory no matter how hard I try.

Lightroom really seems to chew up memory. I'm on the latest version, so I don't think it's a bug. When running thought lots of images, every few seconds counts, so £120 investment into an extra 8Gb makes sense.

Yeah, RAM is pretty cheap - I just wanted to point out the unfortunate fact that Windows 7 doesn't leverage gobs of extra RAM to boost performance in any meaningful way. :( I wish it did!

With that much RAM you might want to explore creating a RAMdrive and putting your Lightroom library into it, or maybe the temporary storage pool that Lightroom uses.

Hmm, I think I need to look into tripplescoop's licencing terms. What do you use for music on the desktop version?

I don't do slide shows professionally; I use commercial music for the ones I do, so I'm not the right person to ask. :)

[Jonathon Watkins]

It looks like the HD launch has been slightly delayed:

http://animoto.com/blog/uncategorized/some-flash-y-upgrades/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+animoto+%28Animoto%29

I know I need more RAM as after 2-3 hour of Lightroom & pHotoshop work my machine runs like a dog. (I also monitor it with Windows 7 great range of performance tools ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

I know I need more RAM as after 2-3 hour of Lightroom & pHotoshop work my machine runs like a dog. (I also monitor it with Windows 7 great range of performance tools ;-)

I'd be interested to know how the extra RAM helps - I've never seen any evidence that having gobs of RAM above 4-6 GB does anything for application or system performance, but I'd love to be wrong because RAM is pretty cheap. Let me know how it works out for you!