This article is brought to you by Animoto. Make great videos. Easily.
Confession time. Alan and I take tons of photos and videos. But besides using them in our articles or on social media, we rarely do anything with them. For instance, when family and friends asked to see more of our Antarctica cruise photos, we had to direct them to the few articles that we’ve written so far or to Facebook or Instagram. Of course not everyone uses social media. And that’s why it’s been so much fun creating this Antarctica video using Animoto.
Looks professional, right? And it’s so much easier than struggling with iMovie or another video editing software. All I did was choose the photos and videos, size them correctly and upload to my account at Animoto. Then I selected a template—okay I spent way too many hours playing with templates. After that, I uploaded the photos and videos. Arranging them is as simple as dragging and dropping. Add in a few captions, preview your work and then hit publish. It really is that simple.
Don’t like the way a photo looks or is a video too long, you’ll find easy-to-use editing tools. Want to change the song that accompanies the template? You can do that, too. If you get stuck or have a question about producing or sharing the video, consult the Animoto Help page. You’ll find well-written instructions covering a comprehensive list of questions or problems.
But I’ll share a few more tips to make it even easier:
- Create a folder on your computer desktop to hold the photos and videos to be uploaded to Animoto. This will save you so much time.
- Focus on one portion of your trip using photos that highlight the essence of your travel experience.
- Include shots of yourself to make the video personal.
- Add a few captions but don’t overwhelm the video with text.
- Choose the “fit” button to match your finished project to the music in the video.
- Keep video between 2 and 3 minutes. Your friends and family will thank you (and actually watch all of it).
- Hit publish, then share with friends and family through email, social media or a download saved to your computer. You can even share to You Tube.
Animoto offers apps for iPad, IOS and Android, which means easy video creation from a smartphone, iPad or tablet. Do you use Lightroom for photo editing? There’s an Animoto app for that, too.
A personal account at Animoto is $8 per month, paid on a yearly basis. I recommend the 14-day free trial to make sure that Animoto is for you. But I know it will be. You should see the list of travel videos that I’m going to create with my Animoto account.
So what do you think of our Antarctica video? Join the conversation at the My Itchy Travel Feet page on Facebook or send us an email to ask a question about my experience using Animoto.
Disclosure: Animoto sponsored this article. But the opinions are strictly my own.
