Animoto: Second Life Music Videos

Location: Animoto Web site

Though not intended for SLers in particular, Animoto provides a wonderful way to have some fun with one's avatars. It's free for videos of 30 seconds--longer ones are for premium members only.

Tenchi Morigi has already done a nice mashup of images and music at this site; she gets credit for telling me about it.

Given my love for the bluegrass clasic "Old Slewfoot." The uncertain fate of Pappy Enoch, I decided to mash up a tribute to the po' alien-abducted boy.

Enjoy...I'm not a great music editor, and the process is slow, so the images and sound do not synch as well as I'd like. Visit Animoto and give it a try today.

While I'm cranking some backwoods classics, Pappy's pick for a "classic" version of the tune, by Jim & Jesse in 1976, can be found on YouTube. As Pap says "If'n this hear vershun don't make yu run out tu git a pompy-door hairdoo n' a suede soot, yu mite as well bee dead."



Some more Info from Tenchi:

Animoto got my heart from the spot. The handling is quite easy and the professionalism comes with the encoding by itself.

Basically everything you have to do is add pictures, add text if you like and some music.
I have noticed some things you might want to take care of:

• Rather choose electronic music then anything else. Animoto likes to look for a baseline to use as a metronome in my eyes. I got the best results using electronic music.
• Take care on how many pictures you add. Adding more pictures then can be displayed during the running time of the soundtrack they will not be displayed. Try using normal speed or half speed for displaying the images. This makes the the presentation more relaxed. Higher speed will make it rather hectic sometimes.
• Count at least 5 seconds for each picture or textslide
• One click remixing can greatly change the video and give it a whole new look. So give it a try when you are not satisfied.
• Once the encoding starts you can safely shut down the website. Animoto will inform you once your video is ready.

The free version of Animoto gives you 30 Seconds of Video. If you want a longer Video you will have to purchase a credit for a full video which costs you 3USD or an unlimited number of full videos subscription for 30USD.

For playing around with the tool I bought one credit for a full video for 3USD which is quite ok with me. For those slideshow maniacs you might rather want to try out the big package. If so entering the referral code "ytnxzuwo" (without "") will save 5USD on the purchase of the full pack.

This video is the result of about 30 minutes of arranging,uploading and adding text: