That is http://animoto.com and I *love* it. I have the commercial version and though it is a little pricey, the ability to burn dvds for free is worth it. I use it with every sales session. All the music is free and included. All you do is upload it, choose the music an voila' a cool video.

If anyone is interested, here is a promo code ocwgtpks It will get your money off and gives me free months.

Julie,

Wheels are a turning...$$$

Have you sold any 'videos' to your clients?

OK, here is a linkity link

http://animoto.com/?ref=ocwgtpks

All you have to do is click that.

I am lazy. I don't like regular slideshows because they are too slow and I swear I have ADD. The regular version of this has animoto branded all over it, the commercial version allows you to have a button at the end to put whatever link you want and high res videos for free. They look awesome

I made a DVD of a bunch of high res videos and burned them so they would play one after the other and loop and it was awesome. Great for those of us who are at shows and stuff. I am going to put one in a bank display!

Preston, I use them for incentives, if they hit a certain dollar amount, the are a gift. Everybody wants them, and almost everyone goes beyond that $$$.

The best thing about them is the emotion it creates. It is what I show them FIRST on the projector screen with surround sound. 90% of people cry. It is good to cry.

Once they place their order, I send the animoto to them via facebook and they place it on their wall. People click it straight to my site.

So, its more of a sales tool for me vs a sales item. I do know people who sell them though

Oh, and I thought of something else.... You're at a cat show, you take and make multiple 3 min slideshows of different shoots at cat shows and burn a dvd of all of them together so it loops, put it on a dvd/tv combo and I guarantee people will stop and stare. Especially looking for their cats, then they will wait to see if their cat is in the show... Then they will WANT their cat in it!!!

Tami,

You might want to check out what the lady does at our shelter. She is retired and does this full time as a volunteer, she spends hours touching up the photos. She does a really wonderful job:
http://petfinder.com/shelters/MD103.html

She has someone helping when she does them. She kind of glosses over the cats but does a great job on the dogs.

Also, all the photos at my link are of shelter rabbits. They let me bring them home and shoot them overnight, 3-5 at a time, and then I would drive them to get spayed or neutered the next day.

Then there is the company I used to work for, which you could apply for a job at, photographing pets at Petco all year long. They have a contract with them. You will get oodles of on the job experience. If you want to PM me, I'll give you that info.

Patti

I've been looking at Animoto ever since Julie posted her first slide show / video from them. I've been trying to hold off, but I'm teetering closer and closer to signing up.

I like the idea of the video as an incentive. Do you let the clients choose the photos for the video or do you do that on your own if they reach the target amount?

I also have been playing around with this and I love it but....

I am wondering about the time spent on resizing, formatting and "playing" around so that they can create a good looking result. It does not seem to like certain shapes.

Julie have you got a good workflow for this program that fits into your normal work?

Yes, it is really fast. You can use a PS action to resize to 100px and 250kb and that will make a really nice high rez version. If you don't want a high rez version, than your typical 550px and 99kb works just fine. Send those to a folder on its own, and just ctrl A all the files in the folder to upload them, then I might move them around a little, might add a text box here and there and then choose the music and let it do its thing

I actually use http://www.nsonic-net.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=336&Itemid=0 Which you can change the language to english when you download. It is the easiest resizer I have found. Any resizer works including PS.

I use all the photos from a session in a video, but, I cull heavily down to 30 images or less. There is no reason to have a bunch of photos that are just minor variations of the same thing