Animoto

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.

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.

While we produce longer form video using editing software such as Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere we still value our Animoto subscription to create something fast and flashy. For seasonal or holiday-based promotions or events, they have some great 'themed' backgrounds. We really get use out of Animoto when we have people share their photos and cell phone videos from events we can't attend and then we are able to quickly generate fun and engage videos that really capture the event. Being able to create 'square' aspect ration videos easily is enormously useful if your primary distribution is on Social Media. Just as great is the ability to go back and re-edit the video in 16x9 quickly and easily for display on a monitor or video wall.

Most of the music that Animoto has for its videos get ads placed on them when used on YouTube so we don't use them anymore and instead either upload youtube safe music from youtube or from royalty free music we purchase or own. Animoto has made great strides in creating some of their square and marketing video templates but could use some more holiday/seasonal and general styles as it has been a while since I've seen some new exciting themes.

I knew of Animoto but had never used until my client (A photographer in Melbourne) suggested using it to create a promo video with images she had taken during one of her event photography gig. At first I was skeptical and was considering using Lumen 5 for that since I've used it for a while and I'm very comfortable with it.

But Wow, Animoto is definitely 100 times better than Lumen 5. The interface is smooth, it's easy to use, it allowed me to upload images and videos to use. It also let me create "Quotes" as opposed to a "text" slide that's simply a text and the background color.

I also like how the text element has an option for Title and subtitle, I also love how I can change the font size, spacing etc.

Animoto is perfect although I wouldn't say no to the ability to crop an uploaded video, especially when the final exported video has to be within a specific time frame.
My client wanted a video no less than one minute but the video she had was over 3 minutes. I had to use Movavi to cut the video before uploading it to Animoto