Is Animoto Still the Best EASY Slide-to-Video creator?

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Phil

I don't really do much video, so I'm out of touch -

I need to create a video every day with about 30 slides, plus branding. I remember when Animoto was all the rage but maybe there's something better (and cheaper) on the market these days?

It doesn't much matter whether it's online or downloadable software, but since this needs to be done daily I want a process that makes it as quick and easy as possible - just swap out the slides each day and done!

Animoto, using my own branding, would be $30-40 per month or about $240 per annum.

Thanks for any suggestions!

It's kind of a trick question, as I never thought Animoto was best, only the most recommended by marketers.

I like Proshow better. I haven't tried their online service but really like their software. I have Proshow Producer, but Proshow Gold is probably good enough. They have a free trial of all 3 options, so check them out.

ProShow - The Ultimate HD Slideshow Tool

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Kurt

9 years ago

Let me add...by "slides" I'm assuming you mean photos/images?

If not, I like and use PowerPoint for video projects that aren't based mostly on images.

Thanks
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Phil 9 years ago

Hi Kurt - thanks!

I completely forgot about ProShow. That was very good many years ago so if it's still going now then I expect it's far better than Animoto - which doesn't seem to have moved in all these years.

And yes, when I said 'best', in reference to Animoto, I meant 'acclaimed' - regardless of the value of the acclaim. Now you've reminded me of Proshow I think that might actually be the 'best'.

RE: 'slides' - what I'm doing is collecting a bunch of screenshots of my website and dropping them into a video maker as a 'roundup video' of the days' / week's posts. And adding a text message every 3-4 frames. I suppose it doesn't matter much if they are slides or images, but that's what I'm working with.

Thanks again!
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koolphoto

9 years ago

I agree with Kurt.

My two go to software for creating slide videos are ProShow (I use ProShow Producer) and Powerpoint or Keynote (Mac). I combine these with either Screenflow as my easy video editor for Mac or Camtasia for Windows.

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jdjenkins

9 years ago

You can also create slideshows directly within Youtube - it's very easy and quick to use, so ideal for producing large numbers of slideshows.

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Phil

9 years ago

Thanks guys!
As I said to Kurt, I'd forgotten all about ProShow, which I remember trying out many years ago and it was good then.

My workflow is this - I'm grabbing the day's published post links. Cleaning them up, then dropping them in a Firefox plugin that visits each URL and screenshots it. I then run that batch of full page screenshots through a Photoshop image processor to crop them down to a better shape and then uploading them to Animoto - then I add logo/banner front and end and a promo/editorial text/slide image every 3-4 images. Add music and slight fade and zoom so it's not static and I'm done.

The end result is fairly ordinary, but it does the job I need it to. Unfortunately, the process is taking me over an hour every day right now so I'm hiring a coder to see what can be automated - the sticking point, right now, is the video element.

Does Proshow offer much automation? Or customization options to add automation do you know?

Thanks
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Kurt

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Phil

Thanks guys!
As I said to Kurt, I'd forgotten all about ProShow, which I remember trying out many years ago and it was good then.

My workflow is this - I'm grabbing the day's published post links. Cleaning them up, then dropping them in a Firefox plugin that visits each URL and screenshots it. I then run that batch of full page screenshots through a Photoshop image processor to crop them down to a better shape and then uploading them to Animoto - then I add logo/banner front and end and a promo/editorial text/slide image every 3-4 images. Add music and slight fade and zoom so it's not static and I'm done.

The end result is fairly ordinary, but it does the job I need it to. Unfortunately, the process is taking me over an hour every day right now so I'm hiring a coder to see what can be automated - the sticking point, right now, is the video element.

Does Proshow offer much automation? Or customization options to add automation do you know?

PowerPoint will give you more/easier control when adding and creating additional slides like your promo slides, whereas Proshow will make it easier to create Animoto-style videos by adding effects and animations. Both can import a folder of images.

I think I'd just create the promo slides as PNGs/JPGs and put them in the same folder as the screenshots, then rearrange the slides as needed once the images are imported into PowerPoint or Proshow. The issue here would be removing the effects from the promo slides in Proshow.