Animoto

Pros

Easy drag-drop and play! We use this from time to time to make informational content, video installation, and drip marketing materials for customers. Hundreds of templates to choose from, applicable to almost every platform we use.

Cons

Can be time-consuming if you don't have edited material to upload into this software, blocking out sound adding audio, etc.

Pros

Its ease of use is definitely the best thing about this software. I can easily create a slideshow in a couple of minutes with a template video (something that I wouldn't even know how to do outside of Animoto), add licensed music, and tweak it, including the speed at which the images are shown and the order. This whole process used to take me at least 40 minutes and involved different sofware tools. Plus, if I had to correct a small detail of it, I would need to create everything again from scratch, and though I could save my project as I was working on it, I would need to export new versions every single time. Animoto creates videos in different sizes AND uploads them to a custom link at the same time, saving me countless hours of work.

Cons

Well this is not actually Animoto's fault, but I wish I could use or upload different songs, particularly those that my clients are more familiar with. I understand this is not possible because of copyright issues, but in some countries outside of the US clients do ask for slideshows with different music choices, just for their personal use. However, this only happened a couple of times and the music options that Animotoo offers are plenty, so we were always able to give them something they would like instead. Sometimes, I felt that part of a clip could use some shortening or that I didn't want to add that particular bit, and this is not something that we can edit. Although I was able to choose a different one altogether since Animoto is designed to be quick and easy to use it lacks some customization capabilities that would be nice to have.

Pros

I can't lie: if one were motivated to produce a not-quite-narrative--an advert or "spring break memories!" type video, a tutorial, even--in a few minutes, it would be fine. Animoto lets you drop your media into a box that you then distribute across their templates (which are fine) or into a from-scratch video, and boom.

Cons

It's not very powerful and hasn't many options--which is fine in some cases. You can change fonts and the order of your media. Something about the way their fonts lay in the video is just UGLY, though. Their animations are... hmm. And their templates only seem to look decent if one's media is professionally-shot. If you have an idea in mind (ie narrative notions or original editing style), skip this one. If you like using animated gifs, keep on looking. (NOTE: You CAN import a gif, it's just that it won't be animated in your video.) Also, the layout of the web app is pretty but not very intuitive.

Pros

Animoto has been a life-saver for us. We love to create simple videos for our clients to review our product, and Animoto does just what we need, and in the time we need it done. This software will create the video for you, just load in what you need and Animoto does the rest.

Cons

You will not be able to control the editing of the videos, as Animoto does that for you. If you enjoy being more creative, Animoto does have a limited range of music selection and editing styles.

Pros

I remember when Animoto first came out. I was using it in the classroom with students to curate their images for various assignments (book trailers, public service projects, social media campaigns) etc. This was something they enjoyed. There are workarounds to do similar things, like using Google Slides or PowerPoint, or iMovie, but this takes the guesswork out of it. A simple tool to be able to merge images and video into a slide presentations/slideshow and overlay music to it. Comes out very professional looking. Students enjoy sharing these as it requires minimal movie editing experience and is a lot easier than iMovie. If you are using a LMS, I love how you can embed this inside it! Another way for teachers to be creative in how they deliver the content to their students.

Cons

There aren't a lot of features or customization, but it is pretty straightforward in that you add images, add video, and ick a song. The rest is done by Animoto. There are templates to choose from as well, but would be nice to have a few more features/animations to make it more personal.