Creating Your First Online Video With Animoto

Online videos are now a common part of daily life thanks to YouTube and similar services. We have grown used to having videos available to inform, teach and entertain us. But, making an online video isn't the easiest task for many people. Let's face it, many of us don't have the artistic ability to put together a really amazing video. Even if we did, we may not have the equipment necessary to do so.

This is where services like Animoto come into play. These services allow normal people to quickly create amazing videos at a very affordable cost.

To get started with Animoto, you need to first create an account. If you aren't sure if you'll enjoy using the service, you can make short 30 second videos for free to get a feel for the system. Once you decide that it is for you, you can sign up for a plan for as little as $5 a month.

To make your first video, simply click on the "Create Video" button. This will take you to a layout page that will then guide you through making your video. For your first video, I strongly suggest that you don't overthink the process. Just make selections using the menu on the left side of your screen, upload your images and then click on the "Produce Video" button. Once you see the initial results, you'll have a better idea of what you may want to tweak to make the video perfect. Keep in mind that each time you click the "Produce Video", the program will create a unique video with different transitions for you. This is true even if you don't change anything on your layout.

To give you an idea of the results that you can expect, I've included the results of my first attempt at using Animoto as part of this hub. The two versions of the video together took just over an hour to create. Most of that hour was spent looking for images on iStockphoto.com and in trying out several different styles and music selections.

How did I select the images used in the video? I simply went through iStockphoto and grabbed a selection of images that came up by searching on immigration related keywords. For the purposes of my video, I tried to get images that would help illustrate the key concepts I was trying to convey. For a video for family and friends or a vacation video, I would probably just upload a random selection of family or vacation pictures and then let Animoto do its magic. Again, don't overthink the process.

One of my biggest concerns when I started working on my first video with Animoto was the size and resolution that I would need for my images. The Animoto helpdesk suggests that your images be "ideally at a resolution of 1280x960 pixels or higher." This created a problem for me, because the images that I was planning on using were mostly from iStockphoto.com.

The cost of purchasing images that were of a resolution of 1280x960 pixels or higher would have been outside my budget. The extra small and small images from iStockphoto.com, however, were within my price range. For the most part, these images only cost one or two credits (around $1.50 to $3.00) and had resolutions like 485x282 pixels or 283x424 pixels. Would these images be of good enough quality for my video?

For me, the quality of the video using the more affordable, but lower resolution images, was more than good enough for my purposes. I've included both the standard version of the video and the HD version of the video so that you can decide for yourself.