Animoto lets you create slideshows set to music, very easily and quickly on the iPhone …
I discovered Animoto via a Techcrunch post a few days back, and have been messing round with it periodically throughout these holiday days, and liking it a lot.
As mentioned above, what Animoto does is create ‘video’ slideshows on the iPhone – and it makes it a breeze to do these in no time flat.
Animoto’s interface is simple and great to work with. Here’s its main screen:
Straight away, navigation is dead simple. Choose one of the two big buttons to either create a new ‘video’ (I think it would be better to call these slideshows) or hit ‘My Videos’ to work with any of the shows you’ve already created. You can also access these two areas via the app’s bottom row of tabs.
As you can see from the screencap above, both the app’s user interface and its features, have been kept very streamlined. It does one thing, and does it very well.
Here’s how easy it is to create a new slideshow: hit ‘Create new video’, select 8-16 photos to use in the show, re-order them if you like, choose some music from the list provided by Animoto (in categories like Classical, Jazz, Pop, Latin etc.), and tap ‘Create Video’ again to finalize your show.
This can be done in under a minute, or a little longer if you spend time re-ordering your pics and pondering music selection :) Then you just need to wait a few minutes while the show is rendered and very soon it’s ready for action.
Once your slideshow is created, you can go to the ‘My Videos’ section, select one that you’ve made, and choose to share it (just type in an email address to send to, or choose a contact from your Contacts list), edit or remix it, rename it, or delete it.
I found this a great, fast way to share some Christmas morning action shots of presents being opened, without any need to jump on a computer. Later in the day, I shared larger sets via Picasa, but the quick slideshow produced right on the iPhone was perfect for sharing things almost instantly with family members who weren’t with us at the time.
Here’s a quick example, that I threw together with screencaps of some apps I’ve been using during the week:
http://animoto.com/play/0KQEZ1GduHjBvTi0EBzwMA
Overall, Animoto is a pleasure to work with so far, and very good at what it does. My only two wish list items so far are an ability to use more than 16 photos in a show, and to select some of your own music out of iTunes, rather than just their standard set of choices. I imagine both of those may be added to a future update or perhaps a premium version.
Animoto is free and available now in the App Store, HERE.
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