Animoto allows you to make your own videos for any occasion; this app makes it easy to create short videos and add soundtracks and clips to personalize them. This is also a fun way to assess learners’ knowledge after they complete lessons.

Website: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id409124087

What Users Love About the App

“While we produce longer form video using editing software such as Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere we still value our Animoto subscription to create something fast and flashy. For seasonal or holiday-based promotions or events, they have some great ‘themed’ backgrounds. We really get use out of Animoto when we have people share their photos and cell phone videos from events we can’t attend and then we are able to quickly generate fun and engage videos that really capture the event. Being able to create ‘square’ aspect ration videos easily is enormously useful if your primary distribution is on Social Media. Just as great is the ability to go back and re-edit the video in 16×9 quickly and easily for display on a monitor or video wall.”

“I love Animoto’s ease of use, along with the amazing quality final product. It looks professionally made, even when they’re created by 4th graders.”

 “I can’t lie: if one were motivated to produce a not-quite-narrative–an advert or “spring break memories!” type video, a tutorial, even–in a few minutes, it would be fine. Animoto lets you drop your media into a box that you then distribute across their templates (which are fine) or into a from-scratch video, and boom.”

“The ability to compile videos with premade templates allows making videos to be a breeze. Have a video you make often? Copy the template and update the photos. A wide variety of music and sharing options are available as well.”

“Its ease of use is definitely the best thing about this software. I can easily create a slideshow in a couple of minutes with a template video (something that I wouldn’t even know how to do outside of Animoto), add licensed music, and tweak it, including the speed at which the images are shown and the order. This whole process used to take me at least 40 minutes and involved different sofware tools. Plus, if I had to correct a small detail of it, I would need to create everything again from scratch, and though I could save my project as I was working on it, I would need to export new versions every single time. Animoto creates videos in different sizes AND uploads them to a custom link at the same time, saving me countless hours of work.”

What Users Dislike About the App

“It’s not very powerful and hasn’t many options–which is fine in some cases. You can change fonts and the order of your media. Something about the way their fonts lay in the video is just UGLY, though. Their animations are… hmm. And their templates only seem to look decent if one’s media is professionally-shot. If you have an idea in mind (ie narrative notions or original editing style), skip this one. If you like using animated gifs, keep on looking. (NOTE: You CAN import a gif, it’s just that it won’t be animated in your video.) Also, the layout of the web app is pretty but not very intuitive.”

“It’s incredibly expensive for a monthly plan and then the options in the templates do not allow for customization. Some of the templates are corny or old fashion and the ones that are not overly plain. Some do not allow for image adjustments from portrait to landscape. Overall, it could be revised with template options for the cost.”

“I’m disappointed that they made the video clip library only available under the Pro+ plan when it used to be available under the Pro plan. I also wish the new “branding” option didn’t put your logo in the corner throughout your video, or that that option was editable.”

“When it comes to customizable videos, outside of the templates and computer generated layouts, it’s very difficult to customize your layout, other than order of sections.”

“I think, for advanced users that want more conversion options, like marketers, that this software loses some points. It is great for hobbyists. And some pro videos, but loses some over their competition

Most of the music that Animoto has for its videos get ads placed on them when used on YouTube so we don’t use them anymore and instead either upload youtube safe music from youtube or from royalty free music we purchase or own. Animoto has made great strides in creating some of their square and marketing video templates but could use some more holiday/seasonal and general styles as it has been a while since I’ve seen some new exciting themes.”