http://animoto.com/projects/dz5y4ZzdAOYu5qJYHyov6A/images#project-start
THE BASICS
What is Animoto?
Animoto produces TV-quality music videos using your photos and video clips in just minutes.
It's so simple to do too. Choose a song as the soundtrack to your video and Animoto will analyze every nuance of it. Producing a totally unique video each time, no two videos are ever the same.
Sharing them is a cinch as well. Add them to your MySpace & Facebook profiles, on your blog, e-mail them to friends, put them up on YouTube or download them onto your computer.
Some of Animoto's founders used to produce shows for MTV, Comedy Central & ABC, study classical music in London, play in rock bands in Seattle and develop software in Japan. They developed a patent-pending, Cinematic Artificial Intelligence that thinks like an actual editor and director.
How do I get started?
Click "Create Video" from the set of buttons in the upper left to begin. Your first decision will be whether to make an Animoto Short (a 30-second video) or a full-length video (extended length video). Video shorts are always free for everyone and you can make as many as you want).
Animoto will then walk you through the three steps required to create a video. 1) Get your imagery, 2) Get music, and 3) Finalize with details.
What do I need to use this site?
Briefly, you need a few software components: a web browser (which you have already if you're reading this), Javascript turned on in your browser and Flash 9. You can check your version here.
Other than that, you'll need pictures or video clips, of course, to make a video.
Which browser is best to use?
For the best experience on animoto.com, on both Macs and PCs, we recommend you use Safari. In addition to Safari, Firefox will work well too, though possibly not quite as well.
Animoto.com should work in Microsoft's IE6 and IE7 as well (and please let us know if they don't!). However, If you are having difficulties, we suggest upgrading to Safari or Firefox.
While other browsers (Opera, Camino, etc.) should work fine, please note that the only browsers we formally support are Safari, Firefox, IE6 and IE7.
How long will it take me to make a video?
It takes 3 minutes to render 30 seconds of video. If you are making a 10-minute video, this can take a while - even a couple of hours. We suggest that if you need this for a school assignment or presentation for work, you make your video the day before, to ensure that you have it in time.
Try downsizing large image files before you upload them to make the image upload stage fast, especially if you have a lot of images.
What exactly is Animoto doing when it is creating my video?
Animoto uses patent-pending technology to analyze your images and everything about the selected music - its structure, genre, energy, build, rhythm - before developing a blueprint for the motion design of your video. The remaining time is spent rendering your video, using a giant farm of computer processors to custom-generate 15 new images per second for your final video.
CREATING A VIDEO: Images
How many images should I use?
24-40 items (text, images, video clips) get displayed per minute of video depending on the song's tempo.
Animoto videos stop either when the music runs out or when there is no more imagery left to display... whichever comes first. So, depending on the length and tempo of the song chosen, make sure that there are enough images to see the song until its end, and conversely, that your song is long enough to show all the images that you'd like included in your video.
If the video doesn't come out right in terms of timing, you can always do an Editing Remix to the video. Add/delete images or switch-out the soundtrack, until your video is just right.
Do images have to be in a particular format or size?
Images must be in jpeg or gif formats and no larger than 5MB in size.
What's the difference between uploading and retrieving images?
Animoto gives you two ways to get your images. You can either UPLOAD them from your computer or have Animoto RETRIEVE them from an online photo management site. We currently support direct image retrieval from Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, Picasa, and Photobucket.
If you have the choice, we recommend retrieving your images from your online photo manager since they are already downsized for a faster upload. If the photos stored on your computer have a very high resolution (more than 1 MB in size), you may want to downsize them first to reduce upload time if you plan to make videos to share online. We recommend downsizing to no less than 640x426 (or about 50kb per image), and no more than 1024x768 (or about 100kb per image).
If you plan to make videos for DVD or to download onto your computer, it's best to upload images that are at least 1024x768--but still, no need for pics more than 1 or 2 megapixels.