Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

"If you think you like your Animoto videos now, just wait until you’re able to see them in all their glory. We’re proud to release our latest feature: the option to upgrade and re-render any Animoto video to DVD-quality. Not only do these videos look fantastic when viewed on your computer, they look amazing on big screen TV’s or even projected for a party, concert, wedding, secret rave, or any other type of event. For $5, you can now upgrade/re-render any Animoto video. It’s available in two different formats for you to download: a .MP4 file which can be played directly on your computer with Quicktime, and an .ISO file which can be burned directly to a blank DVD. For $5, you get both file types. Or for $20 (plus S+H), we’ll have the DVD mailed to you."



I wrote a review of Animoto earlier this year, and while I still love the quality of the videos, I have to give a big thumbs down on this move: DVD quality resolution (SD, standard definition) just isn't good enough in this modern HD era. I think $3 is a reasonable price for a video, but that should be the price of the DVD-quality video, and $5 should give you a 1280 x 720 resolution video. HD is the here and now, SD is from a previous era. Come on Animoto dudes, catch up to the HD world!

Animoto is easily the most sophisticated, yet easy to use, online slideshow tool I've yet seen. I took it for a spin over the weekend, and if you like the idea of feeding your photos to a service and having it crank out an insanely cool looking music video, then this is the service for you.



The process is really simple - you upload your photos through a Flash-based uploader (which I didn't think was actually possible), and once those are uploaded you move on to the music step. You can either upload a music file off your own computer (and they encourage you to respect the copyright of artists), or you can pick from amongst their surprisingly nice selection of music. In the final stage, where it explains what step of the process it's on, and - this is great - they offer you video trailers and movie news in a sidebar that you can click on while you wait. That put a smile on my face because it's such a nice touch. Here's how my video turned out... Read more...