Animoto Rocks
September 9, 2007
By: Jay Thompson
Author's Website: http://www.phoenixrealestateguy.com
Thanks to the Men of Sellsius, I jumped into Animoto to see what the buzz was about.
This site is slick. You can quickly make “videos” of pictures you supply, sync’ed to music with spiffy transitions. Here is one I put together for a listing.
The service is free, but that limits you to creating 30 second clips. Unlimited use for longer videos is only $30/year.
There are some limitations with Animoto that may annoy those who want complete control. It decides the transitions and timing (though you can “spotlight” photos — making them stay on-screen longer). You chose the photos of course, and can order and rotate them. You also select the music — either titles supplied by Animoto, or MP3s you upload.
Embedding in a Wordpress blog can be tedious enough to drive one crazy– that’s the fault of the Wordpress visual editor, not Animoto. Dave Smith has some tips to help, but for the life of me I couldn’t get it to embed on GeekEstate. I couldn’t even iframe it. (note to Drew, installing the Vipers’ Video Quicktags plugin may help)
It’s very easy to create these Animoto things. Marketing potential is huge. Give it a whirl!
- Stumble it!
- Categories: Impression Advertising, Video
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Comments
9 Comments so far
Brad on September 9, 2007 8:32 pm
Hi Jay, it’s Brad, one of the Animoto guys. We’re working with WordPress to figure out how to allow Animoto videos to be embedded in WordPress blog pages. We use WordPress for our Animoto blog (http://blog.animoto.com/) so we agree that it’s annoying that they don’t allow Animoto videos yet.
Thanks for your post!
Athol Kay on September 10, 2007 5:50 pm
I managed to upload one on my blog though it seems twitchy at how it allowed it.
I write using Blogjet and publish there to Wordpress. The only way it appeared to work was if the Animoto embed code was the last thing I did in HTML and published right from the HTML page rather than clicking back over to the rich text editor.
Sean Reilly on September 11, 2007 9:55 am
At least it works on macs (under safari) which is better than the marketing materials that many agents provide.
Personally, I’d be happy if agents could at least take some decent pictures and put them online in a high enough resolution to actually see the property.
Even better, take a look at http://www.espc.com for a great example of a way to present properties - by listing, map location, etc. Agents over here (Scotland) also provide high quality PDF brochures for each property which are incredibly handy as well as informative.
Zoltan Szendro on September 12, 2007 8:49 pm
I love Animoto also. We compiled a presentation of some 100 randomly selected RealBird members. It’s amazing how well Animoto animates for different type of musics. Check it out here: http://realbird.typepad.com/news/2007/08/animoto-revisit.html
Regarding Wordpress embedding, it seems that the Wordpress editor moves some of the tags outside of the object tag and then wraps the whole thing in . I had success helping a friend of mine to embed Animoto into a Wordpress blog using IE 6. Not with Firefox nor with Safari. Even then, one can not re-edit the post, otherwise the tags get massed up again. So IE 6 is OK for embedding Animoto into Wordpress blogs but only in HTML mode and being the last edit on the post. You can re-edit, but the manual fix of the Animoto code must always be the last change.
Brad (@ Animoto) - it seems that you are using ClearSpring as the widget platform. Isn’t it something they should help you solve? It is their widget code which does not seem to be compatible with the current Wordpress editor.
– Zoltan Szendro
RealBird.com
Jay on April 24, 2008 10:51 pm
Animoto subscription code: iyomkneh
Get $5 off your subscription. I agree that Animoto totally rocks. I signed up for a year of access figuring it was well worth the price to make videos as long as I like.
WO on May 23, 2008 4:18 pm
I love making these videos. The little 30-second clips got me hooked, so I got the unlimited annual subscription for $30. A great deal at that, but now that I found a $5.00 coupon code, everyone else can save some money.
You can save $5.00 by using the Animoto coupon code cdnyxerb at the checkout.
Or you can go to:
http://animoto.com/?ref=cdnyxerb
Liza on November 13, 2008 8:24 pm
I actually saw a business use animoto and was pretty impressed by the quality. Check it out
http://www.adjustablepotracks.com
Liza on November 13, 2008 8:27 pm
Heres another great Animoto
http://sltotems.com/artotemsworld.aspx
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