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Posts Tagged ‘animoto’

We’re big fans of Animoto, a website that lets you easily create photo and video slideshows matched to music. The site is constantly innovating its nifty product, most recently adding an iPhone app and the ability to incorporate video. For those not familiar with Animoto, the startup basically allows you to take your images, video and your music and mash them together to create cool videos. What makes the videos cool is the company’s technology that renders the pictures so they’re in-step with the music you’ve chosen, adding nice transition effects. This morning, Animoto is opening up its API, allowing partners to now incorporate Animoto’s compelling technologies into independent sites

The first API that being rolled out for the Animoto Partner Platform is Animoto Quickstart.  The API essentially allows any website to tap into Animoto’s video creation flow.  The aim is to make Animoto one click away from any website that has photos, videos or music.  Quickstart allows websites to connect their own content, including photos, video clips and music to Animoto as the first step in creating an Animoto video. So partners can integrate Animoto’s video slideshow creation tool into their sites. And the startup promises that Quickstart takes only hours to a partner to set up on a site.

For example, SmugMug, a photo sharing site that caters to professional photographers, uses Quickstart so users can ‘pass’ their photo albums into Animoto’s video creation flow. So is the user now has the option of making a slideshow from their hosted photos and simply needs to pick a song to complete their Animoto video. Once a user slicks to make the slideshow, he or she will be taken to Animoto’s site, where their video and photos will automatically be placed into Animoto’s site.

Another use case is a promotion Animoto is launching with iconic musician John Bon Jovi where fans of Bon Jovi can go to Bonjovi’s site to create an Animoto music video with Bon Jovi’s latest single and footage from his music video.  Pepsi also used the Quickstart API to help users create video slideshows in a contest involving its ShareTheJoy campaign.

With the launch of this API at SXSW, Animoto is partnering with music publication SPIN magazine to allow fans to promote their favorite South by Southwest bands for a chance to win prizes.
From now until March 31, 2010, fans are can create and submit Animoto videos featuring songs from top South by Southwest bands for a chance to win $1000 and a spot on Spin.com, and other prizes.
 
Currently Animoto has 1.4 million users and makes money off of its paid subscriptions. On its site its free to create 30 second videos, but you need to pay $3 per video to make an lengthier slideshow. The site sells a year long subscription to users for $30. A large part of Animoto’s subscription business are composed of professional videographers and photographers who pay $20 per year to create their own branded videos that they can download, and burn to a CD (and the slideshow doesn’t bear the “Animoto” logo). Animoto’s CEO Brad Jefferson tells me that 10 percent of users, so 140,000 people, are currently using some type of paid subscription on the site.The company is already cash-flow positive, which isn’t bad for a startup that’s less than three years old.

In terms of monetizing the API, Animoto isn’t charging any of its partners. In fact, its actually paying its partners in terms of affiliate fees. So if any partners lead new or existing users to the site who end up buying a subscription, Animot will give the partner a 40 percent cut of the first year’s fee.

The Quickstart API seems to be the first of a few sets of APIs that will extend Animoto’s technology onto the other sites. It’s a smart move. While many photo sharing sites have the ability to make slideshows, the technology is not nearly as fun and easy to use as Animoto’s. And Animoto is undoubtedly a compelling tool for an brand marketer to use for a campaign. Frankly, the possibilities are endless because Animoto is such an easy tool to use.

Animoto, the startup that allows you to take your images, video and your music and mash them together to create cool videos, is launching a holiday themed platform that lets you send fun and personal online greeting cards this year and provides nifty themed templates for users to work from.

Animoto launched a similar initiative last year, but this year comes with more festive and innovative themes and options to bring cards to life, including pop-up cards, a Starry Night montage and a Pandora’s Gift Box that will erupts into a shower of lights, colors, and wrapping.

To create an Animoto holiday greeting, users simply upload their images and video clips, add optional text, and pick a soundtrack, upon which Animoto returns a unique, energetic and emotional video montage. The startup’s proprietary technology allows users to easily implement production techniques for video slideshows that are used in television and film, taking into account the images and every nuance of the song. Once created, videos are produced in widescreen format and can be emailed, embedded on any website, shared via social network and mobile device, or downloaded in DVD-quality formats for display on computers, televisions, and even large projection screens.

The 30-second holiday cards are are free to create and share, while full-length videos cost $3. And you can purchase an annual subscription to create an unlimited number of full-length videos are $30.

We’re big fans of Animoto, and we’re not the only ones. Launched in 2007, the startup just raised $4.4 million in Series B funding and is cash-flow positive. With over 750,000 users, Animoto is venturing into mobile, launching an iPhone app and just released a new video product that’s already a hit.

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If you liked the Animoto video at TechCrunch50, just wait until you see what French startup and winner of Seedcamp 2008 Stupeflix has just launched. Can’t keep up with the flood of tweets and pictures about you, your blog, your event or your company? Stupeflix.TV will mash them up on-the-fly into a live TV channel. The results are stunning, and they’re not limited to your own events or companies: you can enter any search terms you like to see what people are sharing at that moment.

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Realizing that it’s better to swim with the stream than against it, MySpace has just turned on two-way sync with Twitter. MySpace status updates can now be sent to Twitter and shared with all of your followers there, and Twitter updates can appear in your MySpace activity stream as well (blog post).

Members of both services can connect their accounts using OAuth. Status updates from MySpace are then identified as being “from MySpace” in your Twitter stream, as if though it were another Twitter client, with a link back to MySPace. Members can choose either one-way (read-only) or two-way syncing.

A couple weeks ago, AOL made its AIM lifestream go both ways with Twitter (and Facebook) as well. So we are definitley seeing a trend here.

Should MySpace start letting you post your status updates to Facebook as well?

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Animoto, the startup that lets you automatically build custom music videos starring your own media, just got even more awesome. Tonight the site is launching support for video, which means you’ll be able to generate customized music videos featuring your home movies, along with photos and music, with almost no effort required. We first previewed the new feature last month, and now the company is opening it to everyone.

The results are impressive, with videos that sport professional transitions that match whatever backing music you’ve chosen. For proof, check out the video below showing off a typical day at the TechCrunch office — it looks great, but it only took around five minutes of work.

Video editing can get tricky fast, but Animoto makes it easy by retaining the same kind of simple interface that’s made the site such a breeze to use with images. Here’s how it works: you upload the images and videos that you’d like to include in your movie, and the site displays a grid of thumbnails that you can drag and drop to determine the order they’ll be displayed in the final cut. You can select which portion of each video clip you’d like to include (up to ten seconds per clip) using an intuitive slider interface on the right hand side of the screen. You can also add text during this portion of the process, and choose if you’d like the audio of your video files to be muted or played over your movie’s background music. Choose a song from the site’s library, or upload one of your own, and you’re done. The entire process only takes a couple of minutes from start to finish, though it can take a bit longer if you decide to do a lot of tweaking. You can watch a video showing the process from start to finish below.

Once you’ve finished the layout of the video, Animoto processes it, using technology like beat detection to match your image and video content to the music that’s playing in the background. The rendering process takes around five minutes for every 30 seconds of content that has to be rendered, so this can take a little while depending how long your video is, but it’s hardly unreasonable.

The new feature is great, but there are a few things that might frustrate new users at first, like the limit of ten seconds (five for the free version) that can be shown from an individual clip before Animoto inserts a transition — you can include as many clips as you want, but they have to be short. CEO Brad Jefferson says that Animoto does this because TV broadcasts rarely include more than ten seconds of uncut footage unless they’re of an interview, so the limitation helps ensure that the videos retain a professional feel. That may be true, but I won’t be surprised if some people grow frustrated about it anyway. There is a roundabout way to include longer chunks of footage that involves duplicating one clip and placing it side by side with the original, but the process isn’t very intuitive.

Animoto is making the new feature available for free to new users, but only for videos a maximum of 30 seconds in length. If you want to make anything longer (and you will), you can pay $3 for a full-length music video, which can be up to 10 minutes long, or become a member for $30 per year, which lets you make as many videos as you want. If you’d like to get a high-res version of one of your videos it will cost $5 for a download, or you can pay $20 to get it shipped on a DVD. Note that all of these prices are consistent with what Animoto offered for its image-based videos — there’s no additional charge for video-enabled movies.

Aside from the new video feature, Animoto has been doing very well. We recently learned that the company has been cash-flow positive since late last year and just raised a $5 million funding round. Jefferson also hints we will be seeing some of these features make it to the company’s iPhone app, though he declined to share any details.

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Animoto is turning into a cult favorite web app - upload a few pictures to the service, pick some music, add some text and get a really cool video slide show back. They made my annual “can’t live without” list last year based on their obsessive desire to perfect a single product. Many, many users agree.

Last month they announced a new round of financing and turned cash flow positive. Users are flocking to their iPhone application that lets you create slide shows from events even before you get back to your computer. And soon, CEO Brad Jefferson tells me, they will let users upload video clips as well as photos to make their slide shows.

They actually showed the feature last month in a promotional video for the Webbies, which shows photos as well as short video clips.

The feature is near-ready to launch to users, Jefferson told me last week. I was on a Southwest flight with him and Wired editor Fred Vogelstein (see his recent Facebook article and a 2007 article on TechCrunch) on the way back from an event in Seattle. Jefferson showed me some of the Animoto clips with video, and even showed off a 3D product they are working on. I took the video above when we landed at Oakland airport, much to the amusement of a few late night passengers hanging out near us. Make sure you watch to the end - Vogelstein is hilarious with the 3D glasses on.

Here’s what’s great about Animoto - these clips take just a few seconds to create. Animoto does all the hard work for you. And the demo videos show clips with mixed images and short video clips put together into a seamless product. You will actually be able tocreate these right from an iPhone using the app, the camera and the new video functionality, and them share with them friends and family.

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In a world where most startups choose gaining users over making money, Animoto is an odd exception: It’s doing both. Since launching in August 2007, the company has signed up some 750,000 users, and some 10% of those are paying customers. And that’s allowed the company to run cash-flow positive since December of last year, CEO Brad Jefferson tells us. And it could keep going on like, but like most startups that taste success, it wants to do more.

So it has raised by far its biggest round of funding to date, a $4.4 million Series B led by Madrona Venture Group. With an already proven business model, Jefferson says the company just wants to accelerate everything it’s doing, and push harder. That means a more diverse roadmap and more importantly, a much broader distribution strategy with more partnerships. One of those partnerships with with iStockphoto, whose founder, Bruce Livingstone, participated in this round.

For those not familiar with Animoto, the startup basically allows you to take your images and your music and mash them together to create cool videos. What makes the videos cool is the company’s technology that renders the pictures so they’re in-step with the music you’ve chosen, adding nice transition effects. We’ve gushed over it previously here, here and here.

One relatively new area of focus for the company is the mobile realm. Back in December, it launched an iPhone app that allows you to create videos from your pictures and music on the device. The app already has 300,000 users. And Animoto has had version 2 of the app ready for months, but Apple has yet to approve it. Jefferson isn’t sure what the actual hold-up is since the first version submitted had very little different besides some upgrades from the first version. And later, Apple apparently didn’t like that it was pushing users to its site to sign up for pro accounts, something which should be rectified shortly with the iPhone 3.0’s in-app purchase system, according to Jefferson. The plan is to have an app that charge the same $3 (or less) that it does on the site to make premium videos (using full-length songs).

And another reason the company is going to need that money is because it’s expanding beyond using photos for its videos and into also using actual videos. Jefferson wouldn’t say too much about it, but check out the Webby’s video below for a preview of how that will work. At this year’s Webby’s it won both the Judges Choice and People’s Voice awards for Best Services & Applications.

“We really believe we’re at the tip of the iceberg for cinematic artificial intelligence technology,” Jefferson says. “We want to allow users to create high production video that tells a story. That has the feel of a short form documentary. Right now that’s mostly teed off of music, but in the future it will be done off of meta data in the photos as well,” he says.

Animoto has raised $5 million in funding total so far, including money from Amazon back in May that was rolled into this round. Prior to that a group of personal investors provided $600K. Additional investors in this round beyond Madrona, Livingston and Amazon include Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC. Matt McIlwain, the Managing Director of Madrona Venture Group is joining Animoto’s board of directors.

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Mother’s Day is just around the corner and those of you who are on top of your game have probably already sent a card and arranged to give your mom a thoughtful gift of flowers, candy, or a gift certificate to a spa. For those of you out there who have done none of the above, Animoto, a startup that automatically generates high quality slideshow/music videos from a set of photos, offers you the ability to make a heartfelt video greeting that would warm any mother’s heart.

The site features a Mother’s Day card that allows you to submit a handful of photos to automatically create a sentimental video-slideshow set to your mom’s favorite music. It’s an easy, quick and and innovative way to show your Mom how much you love and value her on Mother’s Day.

Animoto, which launched in 2007, also helped users make creative slideshow greetings cards on Valentine’s Day and and over the holiday season. Animoto offers a nifty service and does a nice job of spicing up photo albums, with little effort needed on the users’ part. Competitors include RockYou and Slide.

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