animoto imageAre you kind of like me; do you know when a slide-show presentation is just not hitting the mark but don’t have the creative skill or TIME to dedicate to make it pop? I recognize that part of the challenge is that my photography skills are <ahem> limited and no amount of Photoshop know-how will hide this hard fact. Well I found a fantastic tool called “Animoto” (http://animoto.com/) that allowed me to create imaginative and edgy slide show presentations in a matter of minutes. All I had to do was upload a series of images, choose a track from their music library (or I could have opted to use something of my own), and hit the finalize button. I waited for about 5 minutes for my 20 snapshots to render and then cued my video and sat back in amazement as the MTV-like video played. Unbelievable…and so easy to create! And to top it off it’s free for a 15-20 image video but for a nominal fee of $30/year (or $3/video) you can create an unlimited number of longer tracks which you can remix and re-purpose at anytime.

There are a few areas that need improvement including the fact that Animoto does not generate an embed code the way YouTube does. This makes embedding into, say WordPress, very difficult. However, there is a YouTube feature built in that makes posting simple. The other drawback is that there is no way to control edits or pacing leaving you at the mercy of the Animoto engine. Come to think of it maybe that’s not such a drawback given the amazing results!

So, before you run to PowerPoint to create your next slide-show presentation you might want to take a minute or two to test drive Animoto.