I’m a big fan of Animoto and its automatic video-creation service. But even if you get a service to automatically create videos from photos that you’ve chosen and uploaded, there’s still, um, the process of choosing and uploading those photos. What if you didn’t even have to do that? That’s what Animoto is showing off today, with the launch of an ultra-easy site for creating Best of 2012 video montages from photos they’ve uploaded to Facebook.
Users who are interested in this sort of thing need only go to animoto.com/2012 and click “Watch your video.” A few minutes later, the site will have prepared a wonderful, pre-packaged video montage of your 2012 Facebook photos with little actual work on the user’s part.
Frankly, I made an Animoto “Best Of…” video like this a few years ago in 2010, but it was kind of a pain in the ass. The new workflow simplifies the process by stripping out all the unnecessary searching for just the right photo and putting it in order and all of that. It chooses photos for you — automatically! — and puts them in order — automatically! — leaving you to just, uh, share it out to all of your friends and worshippers.
That said, not all Animotos will come out perfect — my first run-through had some photos that I’d prefer to forget about, rather than share with friends — but there’s an easy enough fix. Just click “Tweak It” and you can edit and re-order the photos that Animoto has picked.
Or, if you’re satisfied, just click “Share it,” choose which friends to tag in the video, and post to Facebook. Each Animoto Best of 2012 video will also have a unique link that you can send to friends by email or on the Twitters or post to your Pinterest or whatever.
All in all, pretty fun, and better than that JibJab Gangnam Style bullshit.
Animoto generates custom, professional-looking slideshows from user-uploaded music and photos. Their “patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design” drives the web app. They say the Cinematic A.I. analyzes users’ photos and music like an actual director and editor. For instance, to analyze music the genre, song structure, energy, rhythm, instrumentation, and vocals are all taken into consideration. Once completed, videos can be emailed, downloaded and embedded into other sites. The company says no two videos are ever the...
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