Animoto+app+Description

Animoto provides a movie making app for both iOS and Android platforms to create the same kind of videos produced by its web-version (one of the 50 Ways tools).What it offers is a way to quickly create short videos (less than a minute) with transitions and animations not readily done in most available video editing programs, so they look more professional.

The free applications allow you to upload up to 12 images directly from your mobile device. The next step is to select a theme/style; the preview gives you a sense of the background and the video transitions style it provides. I had already uploaded the 19 images for the Dominoe story, so I had to leave a few out.

The next step is to choose from the library of music Animoto provides; it is organized into themes and styles, and the selection is pretty broad. But you can use music too that is stored on your device (you click an agreement that it is not copyrighted). For my story created on the iPhone I had recorded a shorter version of the story (my preview told me it was 43 seconds)-- that recording was done on my laptop and transferred to the phone via iTunes. If you want to use an app to record audio on the phone, it would have to be capable of saving to the iOS music app or just the appropriate directory on Android.

Before publishing you can give the video a title and date used for the introduction, and optionally add short text that appears on the last slide. The video is published to the Animoto site, where there are many options for sharing. I noted that the options to publish to YouTube only shows up when you are logged into Animoto (it authenticates via your Google account). Also, the embed code is present only when you are logged in.



To create longer videos, you have to upgrade to a paid plan *$5 for one month or $30 for a year). Making a video in 30-45 seconds is easy, but also presents a challenge of making it a story in such a short space, and told primarily via images if music is used as a background. It works well for creating videos that might be an intro or trailer for a project or topic. And it must be one of the easiest apps to use; it is well designed, responsive, and I did not experience any bugs.

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