Animoto is a new service that allows users to create music videos from their photo slideshows. There are full length vids available at a cost, and there are free 30 second vids available as well. I decided to give it a whirl and let you know how my experience was. The service seems like it could be useful for folks wishing to quickly display a sampling of their artwork or photos in an entertaining fashion at a low cost utilizing an easy-to-use user interface.

The sign-up process was relatively painless. They included humor in the process as well, which is always good, incorporating positive words into the annoying anti-bot detection requirement, as well as making the button read “I’M A HUMAN”.

For the actual uploading of images, Animoto supports uploading from your local machine, or accessing some of the popular photo sharing sites online including Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, Photobucket and Picassa. I chose to grab some images from my Flickr site. After giving Animoto permission to access my Flickr account, I chose an album. This process from within Animoto was less than perfect because, for a 30 second clip, one is limited to around 15 photos. Animoto does not display photo counts for the albums in Flickr, at least. I had to login to Flickr to check album sizes. A minor annoyance.

The next step is to choose music. You have an opportunity to upload music from your machine (with a warning that it had better be legit), or choose from selections offered on Animoto. I tried to upload from my machine, but the Animoto service did not seem to have this feature completely bug-free yet, so I had to go with their selections, which included three genres: Indy, electronic or hip-hop. It seemed all of the selections in each category were lame, so I went with what looked to be the least lame. There was no way for me to tell, as the “play” button intended to preview the music before selection did not work.

Okay, so I have the photos loaded, the music selected. Lastly, I need to tell it to create the video. I do this and wait a short amount of time before I receive an email letting me know that the vid is ready for online viewing.

It seems to be a fun little tool, but not very useful in the end because of the lack of control the end user has as to which images are displayed in which way. I think the display order is based upon the way the photos are ordered in the album, but I think it’s more of a throwaway “Oh, neat” thing than anything. We’ll see how it goes, as with all 2.0 startups.

View the video below.

Update: The embedding feature seems to spit out bad code, so you’ll have to follow the link to view the vid they made for me. View the vid for reals.

Cool. The folks over at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival got ahold of me earlier this summer to ask if it was cool if they used a photo I took (left) for their 2008 promo materials. I just noticed that they’re using it on their site, too. I get no cash for it, but I love that they’re using it. Go have a look at the original, uncropped photo.

Seems like some of my other photos are getting some notice as well. The folks over at Schmap sent me a message saying that two of my photos have been shortlisted for inclusion in the Minneapolis shmapplet. From the Schmap site: Schmap is a leading publisher of digital travel guides for 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The innovative technology behind Schmap Guides is also used by clients, partners and bloggers to power schmapplets – a range of fully customizable map mashups and map widgets. Founded in 2004, Schmap is privately owned and based in Carrboro, North Carolina. Interesting concept, eh? The two photos are below.

Gluek opened in 1934 and is the oldest bar in Minneapolis.