Disney Vacation Trip Reports, News and Information
How to Make a Professional Quality Video from your Vacation Photos
Several months ago I learned of a product called Animoto which allows you to take a series of digital photos and creates an incredible, professional-looking video presentation from them. I liked Animoto so much that I signed up as a member and upgraded my membership which allows me to create full-length videos vs. the free account which only allows 30-second videos.
Animoto currently supports several photo sharing and management sites such as Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, Picasa, and Photobucket. The idea here is that you may already have a favorite site which you upload your photos to and instead of re-uploading all of your photos to Animoto, you just tell Animoto to go grab specified pictures from your existing photo sets on your site of choice. In my case, I upload all of my photos to my Flickr account where I have an upgraded Pro membership which allows me to upload unlimited photos and videos I believe. Because the Internet is so dynamic with new sites coming online and old sites getting bought and re-branded, it's best to check with the Animoto FAQ to insure that your favorite photo sharing and management site is supported.
If you don't want to use an external photo management site, you can just upload the photos directly to Animoto which is done through a file browser interface which allows you to select a single file or many files at once. One item to note with either Animoto or any other photo management site, is that it is much quicker to upload images that are of reasonably sized dimensions such as 1024x768 or 1280x1024. Otherwise, you will be uploading huge 2-3MB files which may simply be resized down to a smaller dimension once it is uploaded. I have a batch re-sizer program which does this for me on my PC and on my Macbook Pro I have written a workflow script using the Automator tool which does an excellent job at resizing photos for uploading.
Okay I think we have all of the preliminary photo issues out of the way at this point, now on with how to take those photos and make your high-quality professional video.
Step 1. Log into Animoto.com (sign up if you haven't already) and from the toolbar at the top left select the giant plus '+' sign icon to create a new video.
Step 2. Select Animoto Short (30 second clip) or if you have a paid membership you can select the Full-Length (extended video length option). Note: The processing time for a 30 second video clip is about 2 1/2 minutes which means it will take about 5 minutes of processing for every minute of video you are creating with a 3 minute video taking about 15 minutes to process.
Step 3. If you have uploaded your photos to another site, select Retrieve and select the set to retrieve. If you will be uploading your photos directly, select Upload. Then click the 'Upload Now' button, browse to the folder containing your photos, select them and click the Select button to start the upload.
Step 4. After your photos have been retrieved or uploaded, you should see a grid of photo thumbnails representing the photos you specified. You can drag and drop the thumbnails around to change ordering. The interface supports multi-select for deleting as well.
Step 5. Once you have your photos picked out and arranged properly, it's on to the music. You can either use the provide tracks or upload your own. The provided tracks are good but sometimes it's hard to find one to fit the mood I'm going for. Another thing I try to do is to match the length of the music track to the estimated length of the video provided in the "Let's Get Your Images" step within Animoto (displayed to the right of the photos). As part of uploading your own music track, you will be asked for the Title and Artist, which must be filled in.
Step 6. Once you have selected or uploaded your music track you will be at the Finalize state within Animoto where you will add your Video Title, Video Description, Your (Producer) Name (which defaults to you), and whether this will be an Animoto Short or an Animoto Full Length video. Finally, you can pick the thumbnail which will be displayed to represent the video. After you have made all of your selections, click the Create Video button and Animoto will start creating your video masterpiece.
Once you do it a few times you may discover some of the more advanced features such as deciding where to start your music track if you don't want it to automatically play from the beginning of the track. Another advanced feature I like to use is the Spotlight feature. I advise using this sparingly but use it as you see fit.
Another advanced process I do with my videos is to upload them to YouTube once they have been created. From YouTube you can edit the video even further adding PopUps and even auxillary sound tracks but that's another whole article!
Here is my latest Animoto video I created the other day.
Enjoy and please let me know how you like it.
-Tim
Animoto currently supports several photo sharing and management sites such as Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, Picasa, and Photobucket. The idea here is that you may already have a favorite site which you upload your photos to and instead of re-uploading all of your photos to Animoto, you just tell Animoto to go grab specified pictures from your existing photo sets on your site of choice. In my case, I upload all of my photos to my Flickr account where I have an upgraded Pro membership which allows me to upload unlimited photos and videos I believe. Because the Internet is so dynamic with new sites coming online and old sites getting bought and re-branded, it's best to check with the Animoto FAQ to insure that your favorite photo sharing and management site is supported.
If you don't want to use an external photo management site, you can just upload the photos directly to Animoto which is done through a file browser interface which allows you to select a single file or many files at once. One item to note with either Animoto or any other photo management site, is that it is much quicker to upload images that are of reasonably sized dimensions such as 1024x768 or 1280x1024. Otherwise, you will be uploading huge 2-3MB files which may simply be resized down to a smaller dimension once it is uploaded. I have a batch re-sizer program which does this for me on my PC and on my Macbook Pro I have written a workflow script using the Automator tool which does an excellent job at resizing photos for uploading.
Okay I think we have all of the preliminary photo issues out of the way at this point, now on with how to take those photos and make your high-quality professional video.
Step 1. Log into Animoto.com (sign up if you haven't already) and from the toolbar at the top left select the giant plus '+' sign icon to create a new video.
Step 2. Select Animoto Short (30 second clip) or if you have a paid membership you can select the Full-Length (extended video length option). Note: The processing time for a 30 second video clip is about 2 1/2 minutes which means it will take about 5 minutes of processing for every minute of video you are creating with a 3 minute video taking about 15 minutes to process.
Step 3. If you have uploaded your photos to another site, select Retrieve and select the set to retrieve. If you will be uploading your photos directly, select Upload. Then click the 'Upload Now' button, browse to the folder containing your photos, select them and click the Select button to start the upload.
Step 4. After your photos have been retrieved or uploaded, you should see a grid of photo thumbnails representing the photos you specified. You can drag and drop the thumbnails around to change ordering. The interface supports multi-select for deleting as well.
Step 5. Once you have your photos picked out and arranged properly, it's on to the music. You can either use the provide tracks or upload your own. The provided tracks are good but sometimes it's hard to find one to fit the mood I'm going for. Another thing I try to do is to match the length of the music track to the estimated length of the video provided in the "Let's Get Your Images" step within Animoto (displayed to the right of the photos). As part of uploading your own music track, you will be asked for the Title and Artist, which must be filled in.
Step 6. Once you have selected or uploaded your music track you will be at the Finalize state within Animoto where you will add your Video Title, Video Description, Your (Producer) Name (which defaults to you), and whether this will be an Animoto Short or an Animoto Full Length video. Finally, you can pick the thumbnail which will be displayed to represent the video. After you have made all of your selections, click the Create Video button and Animoto will start creating your video masterpiece.
Once you do it a few times you may discover some of the more advanced features such as deciding where to start your music track if you don't want it to automatically play from the beginning of the track. Another advanced feature I like to use is the Spotlight feature. I advise using this sparingly but use it as you see fit.
Another advanced process I do with my videos is to upload them to YouTube once they have been created. From YouTube you can edit the video even further adding PopUps and even auxillary sound tracks but that's another whole article!
Here is my latest Animoto video I created the other day.
Enjoy and please let me know how you like it.
-Tim
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