Tag Archives: Animoto

Animoto: Still one of my favorites

Posted on 30. Nov, 2011 by .

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Over the years you’ll see me post about various tech solutions for life and ministry. Some of these apps stick, others lose their luster over time. Back in 2008 I discovered Animoto, a slideshow application and fell in love. Of many of the things I find, Animoto has remained one of my absolute favorite tools. I know that there are many who read this blog who didn’t back in 2008, so I thought I’d visit this little app again and talk about what else it does as well.

When Animoto frist came out, it was an intelligent and simple slideshow creator. You simply upload photos and music and it would create a randomly generated slideshow using amazing transitions that seem to just move with the music. Well, over the years they’ve made adjustments and you can also add video. So, you can turn photos and short video clips into an amazing presentation.

I use Animoto for every child dedication, for many of our baptisms, and promos for many of our events as well as for personal family slideshows and video clips. Below are several videos I’ve made so you can see for yourself.

The great part about Animoto is that it’s so inexpensive. For the dedications, I’ll pay an extra $5 to export the high rez video and it’s absolutely brilliant. Now you even have HD options, which I haven’t tried yet.

Bottom line. For a lot of your video stuff, you don’t need to spend hours learning how to use iMovie or other programs. You’ll save a lot of money… and a lot more time using Animoto to do what you need… and it will probably look better than anything you’ll put together yourself (unless you’re really good and have spent a lot of time learning the tools).

To check out and start using Animoto, click here!

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Child Dedication slide shows

Posted on 09. Mar, 2009 by .

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Okay, I intended to get these posted on Saturday, but this weekend was CRAZY!

Here are the two slide shows I used. Thanks for the suggestions on the music everyone, I went with two suggestions.

So, my initial plan was to have three different slide shows that would be running as people came in. However, after I finished the first one I totally changed my plan. It was too good to arbitrarily run while people were coming in. So, I planned to begin the service with the first slide show and then end the dedication with the second show. It was amazing. Check them out here (Oh, and I have password protected these videos. The password is “moistcookies”):

This first song you’ll probably recognize, it’s from the movie: Meet the Robinsons.

Dedication Video 1 from Kenny Conley on Vimeo.

The second song is from Aaron Roughton, a very talented musician who attends our church. If you’re interested in Aaron’s music, you can listen to all of his music here and pick up his album at iTunes. I used his song, “This Very Moment.” Seriously, his whole album is great, but at the very least you should pick up this song.


Dedication Video 2 from Kenny Conley on Vimeo.

Amazing, huh? It was by far the best slide show I’ve ever made and one the best I’ve seen. Creating it was easy. I used Animoto. Click here to sign up for your account.

I paid $25 for a one year account where I could make full lenght shows (the free default is 30 seconds). Because I was showing these on the big screen, I pain an additional $5 per video to get a DVD quality file. Let me tell you, it looked spectacular. Some people sent me low resolution images, but they all turned out great.

I wrote about Animoto a long time ago, but I’m serious, if you dont’ have it or aren’t using it, you really should. Click here to sign up!

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Animoto: My new favorite toy

Posted on 15. Sep, 2008 by .

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I just made this video in minutes. Cool, huh? (Just realized that this video isn’t showing up in Firefox but is in IE and Chrome… so not sure why). Click here if you can’t see the video.

I got this from a blog I read and I was more than intrigued. I decided to give it a shot and WOW, it’s amazing! To be honest, I couldn’t make a better photo collage video in 10 times the time with all the right tools. It’s also the perfect business model in my book. I can make little 30 second movies like crazy, all for free. If I want to export the video in DVD quality, I have to pay for it. If I want to make a longer than 30 second video, I have to pay for it. Sounds fair to me.

Uses? My goodness there are so many fun things to do with this kind of video. The best in my book is use this for the end of the day slide show at camp or VBS. It takes all of 10 minutes and is ready to go in no time. Will using Animoto for all your little slide show videos start looking the same? Maybe, but when it comes to ease of use, you can’t beat this at all. You have to remember the audience too. Kids are more excited about who is “in” the video than what transitions are used over and over (but I do think that Animoto mixes it up well so that no video looks the same.

Dont’ take my word for it… make your own video. Click here to visit Animoto!

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