Practitioner’s view of Animoto
In my opinion this tool does have some useful facets, but
playing the devil’s advocate it also has some negative aspects. On a positive
note, the tool has an easy interface that is “clean” and unfettered with
clutter. It is very intuitive to use, and has just a few steps to complete a “project”
from start to finish. Being a web-based application it has the ease of access
from anywhere in the world, and from any I.T. platform. The finished projects
in Animoto have the potential to be visually stunning, and effective. The tool
generates the “project” in a few short minutes, and then provides the facility
to upgrade the dpi, (at extra cost), to HD quality, and provides a number of
sharing facilities such as Twitter and Facebook. The cost of purchasing the
PLUS version is relatively inexpensive, and does facilitate some easy “upgrades”
of video project outputs.
On the negative side, Animoto does have a “free” version,
but limits the user to low-level dpi video output, and to video clip output
limits to 30 seconds. The purchased PLUS account does facilitate upgrading
video output to 480 dpi (MP4) and extends the length of video time for output
to five minutes, but only the expensive PRO account facilitates “unlimited”
outputs. There does not appear to be any facility to change the settings of the
video output, it runs at the same frame speed, and other than the usual “play,
pause and stop” facilities in any video player, it seems to be restrictive.
Finally to achieve “web ready” video output cannot be achieved with the free
version, the dpi is restrictive and can seem to be blurred or poor. We are likely to continue to use this tool beyond this project.
Overall I like Animoto, and would rate this as 7.5 out of
10, it has some usefulness, but along with this comes some restrictions. -
Terry McHale 21 March 2013
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