SM partners with Animoto?

beetle8 · October 22, 2009

Are we discussing this anywhere else?
http://www.cameratown.com/news/news.cfm?id=8332

beetle8 · October 22, 2009

I'm most interested to hear more about the underlined part below...

SmugMug users can now easily create Animoto videos from photos and video clips in their SmugMug accounts, while Animoto users can export their personalized video creations straight to SmugMug for storage, sharing, and reselling. The announcement was made today at the PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo in New York City.

Shima · October 23, 2009

beetle8 wrote:

I'm most interested to hear more about the underlined part below...

SmugMug users can now easily create Animoto videos from photos and video clips in their SmugMug accounts, while Animoto users can export their personalized video creations straight to SmugMug for storage, sharing, and reselling. The announcement was made today at the PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo in New York City.

Yeah we were leaked the info at the Chicago SMUG on Tuesday, pretty exciting stuff.

My question is, for those who've tried it, does this still have animoto grabbing the watermarked copies? Because when I import a smugmug gallery from animoto, it always grabs the watermarked ones. Anyone try exporting to animoto from smugmug and does it still user the watermarked versions?

Also I'd like to know when we're going to be able to export the high res straight to smugmug, as that'd be awesome.

Tim Kamppinen · October 23, 2009

So, I'm confused. Do we still have to pay for the Animoto videos (it sounds like it)? If so, what exactly is the new feature? Just that there's a link inside the gallery? Because you could import photos from Smugmug to animoto before by logging into your smugmug site from animoto's site, if I remember correctly. So does this just make it slightly easier, or am I missing something?

Andy · October 24, 2009

Tim Kamppinen wrote:

So, I'm confused. Do we still have to pay for the Animoto videos (it sounds like it)? If so, what exactly is the new feature? Just that there's a link inside the gallery? Because you could import photos from Smugmug to animoto before by logging into your smugmug site from animoto's site, if I remember correctly. So does this just make it slightly easier, or am I missing something?

We've built-in two-way integration, check the 'buy button' in your gallery.

Andy · October 24, 2009

beetle8 wrote:

I'm most interested to hear more about the underlined part below...

SmugMug users can now easily create Animoto videos from photos and video clips in their SmugMug accounts, while Animoto users can export their personalized video creations straight to SmugMug for storage, sharing, and reselling. The announcement was made today at the PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo in New York City.

Stay tuned, we'll have more on this shortly, thanks!

HoyBoy · October 24, 2009

Shima wrote:

Yeah we were leaked the info at the Chicago SMUG on Tuesday, pretty exciting stuff.

My question is, for those who've tried it, does this still have animoto grabbing the watermarked copies? Because when I import a smugmug gallery from animoto, it always grabs the watermarked ones. Anyone try exporting to animoto from smugmug and does it still user the watermarked versions?

Also I'd like to know when we're going to be able to export the high res straight to smugmug, as that'd be awesome.

As of last night, yes.

duds · October 25, 2009

Ok, so I have been playing around with the Animoto/SmugMug integration. Seems to work pretty well. Nice feature.

But I'm also unclear about reselling the videos... is that a feature that I should be seeing? There appears to be a "buy > this photo" button on my video, but clicking on it does... nothing. So, I'm assuming that means that I can't sell videos to clients?

J Allen · October 25, 2009

Animoto looks awesome, Great job everyone for that one!

I tried it out (the 30 second freebie), but just have 1 question for now....

Lets say I have a gallery with 200 images in it, and I click the "animoto button" and it pulls all 200 images from that gallery to animoto...what if i only want a specific 25 images from that gallery to make the video out of, not all 200...did I miss where you can select which photo's to insert....

Andy · October 25, 2009

J Allen wrote:

Animoto looks awesome, Great job everyone for that one!

I tried it out (the 30 second freebie), but just have 1 question for now....

Lets say I have a gallery with 200 images in it, and I click the "animoto button" and it pulls all 200 images from that gallery to animoto...what if i only want a specific 25 images from that gallery to make the video out of, not all 200...did I miss where you can select which photo's to insert....

You missed nothing - I'm seeing about this. Stay tuned.

ShepsMom · October 25, 2009

J Allen wrote:

Animoto looks awesome, Great job everyone for that one!

I tried it out (the 30 second freebie), but just have 1 question for now....

Lets say I have a gallery with 200 images in it, and I click the "animoto button" and it pulls all 200 images from that gallery to animoto...what if i only want a specific 25 images from that gallery to make the video out of, not all 200...did I miss where you can select which photo's to insert....

Can't you just delete unwanted images within Animoto, that's what i do

Also, i'm already paying for Animoto ($30.00 a year version)
I don't think it's going to be free from Smug.
I tried to upload High res slideshow to smugmug and it wouldn't load. So i got stuck with a web version. You can always burn a CD with high res and sell it to the customer.

AnimotoBecky · October 25, 2009

Hi,

Thanks for trying out the new capability! If you manually upload your hi-res mp4s from Animoto using SmugMug's video upload option, you can get the high res up there.

Let me know if you have any issues around that!

ShepsMom wrote:

Can't you just delete unwanted images within Animoto, that's what i do

Also, i'm already paying for Animoto ($30.00 a year version)
I don't think it's going to be free from Smug.
I tried to upload High res slideshow to smugmug and it wouldn't load. So i got stuck with a web version. You can always burn a CD with high res and sell it to the customer.

Andy · October 26, 2009

beetle8 wrote:

I'm most interested to hear more about the underlined part below...

SmugMug users can now easily create Animoto videos from photos and video clips in their SmugMug accounts, while Animoto users can export their personalized video creations straight to SmugMug for storage, sharing, and reselling. The announcement was made today at the PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo in New York City.

Yeah I'm sorry, Beetle, this was a mistake and shouldn't have been part of the press release. Selling videos is not ready yet. We hope to do it.

I'm really sorry.

AnimotoBecky · October 26, 2009

Hi Matt,

We hope to have videos be available for sale on SmugMug in the future, but Phase 1 of our integration is simply the pulling of SmugMug images to Animoto and the subsequent export of Animoto vids back to SmugMug. We hope this is just the beginning though...

duds wrote:

Ok, so I have been playing around with the Animoto/SmugMug integration. Seems to work pretty well. Nice feature.

But I'm also unclear about reselling the videos... is that a feature that I should be seeing? There appears to be a "buy > this photo" button on my video, but clicking on it does... nothing. So, I'm assuming that means that I can't sell videos to clients?

duds · October 26, 2009

Thanks, Becky and Andy, for the clarification. Disappointed to hear that, but hopefully it will be offered soon... Would be really great to have the ability to sell the videos through the SmugMug shopping cart.

In the meantime, I'm going to come up with some amazing Google Checkout brilliance that will enable my customers to purchase videos. I think. Or maybe not. We'll see.

beetle8 · October 26, 2009

Andy wrote:

Yeah I'm sorry, Beetle, this was a mistake and shouldn't have been part of the press release. Selling videos is not ready yet. We hope to do it.

I'm really sorry.

:cry bummer

AnimotoBecky · October 28, 2009

Sounds promising! Let me know how that goes.

duds wrote:

Thanks, Becky and Andy, for the clarification. Disappointed to hear that, but hopefully it will be offered soon... Would be really great to have the ability to sell the videos through the SmugMug shopping cart.

In the meantime, I'm going to come up with some amazing Google Checkout brilliance that will enable my customers to purchase videos. I think. Or maybe not. We'll see.

Malte · October 28, 2009

So if I become a personal use subsriber at $30/year, I still have to pay $5 a pop for measly DVD quality downloads? What I get for $30/year is the same sized video I get in the free version?

Malte

Ham1 · October 30, 2009

Shima wrote:

Yeah we were leaked the info at the Chicago SMUG on Tuesday, pretty exciting stuff.

My question is, for those who've tried it, does this still have animoto grabbing the watermarked copies? Because when I import a smugmug gallery from animoto, it always grabs the watermarked ones. Anyone try exporting to animoto from smugmug and does it still user the watermarked versions?

Also I'd like to know when we're going to be able to export the high res straight to smugmug, as that'd be awesome.

Ok we fixed the Watermark issue! IF you have watermarks enabled in your gallery and choose to make an Animoto video, it will pull the Non-watermarked photos!

If you don't have watermarks on, Animoto pulls the 1024x768 size.

Markham

Andy · October 30, 2009

And vids work now, too

duds · October 30, 2009

Hmm.. I've noticed that if I'm on SmugMug, and I choose to create an Animoto video, it pulls the images without watermarks. This is a great change - thanks!

But... if I'm on Animoto, and I choose to retrieve photos from SmugMug, it will pull the watermarks.

Not a big deal - I can easily go to SmugMug to get the files. Just thought I'd bring it up.

AnimotoBecky · November 2, 2009

Thanks for the heads-up about that! Am letting our main Web 2 guy in charge of the integration know of this now.

duds wrote:

Hmm.. I've noticed that if I'm on SmugMug, and I choose to create an Animoto video, it pulls the images without watermarks. This is a great change - thanks!

But... if I'm on Animoto, and I choose to retrieve photos from SmugMug, it will pull the watermarks.

Not a big deal - I can easily go to SmugMug to get the files. Just thought I'd bring it up.

HoyBoy · November 3, 2009

I saw this: http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1249718&postcount=19

So I thought we were good to go. So I went to animoto and made a video tonight, only to have it pull images with a watermark. I had gone in through SmugMug and while there signed up for the $30/year account. I then paid the extra $5 for the hi res version of the video. Then when it played I see my watermark. :nah

Then I came back to this thread and see that there is an issue depending on how you get to animoto. But I went through SmugMug so I'm really confused and a little unhappy.

Andy · November 4, 2009

HoyBoy wrote:

I saw this: http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1249718&postcount=19

So I thought we were good to go. So I went to animoto and made a video tonight, only to have it pull images with a watermark. I had gone in through SmugMug and while there signed up for the $30/year account. I then paid the extra $5 for the hi res version of the video. Then when it played I see my watermark. :nah

Then I came back to this thread and see that there is an issue depending on how you get to animoto. But I went through SmugMug so I'm really confused and a little unhappy.

what gallery did you use for your images?

echmrr · November 4, 2009

Hi AnimotoBecky,

I tried out Animoto for the first time about a month ago. I loved everything about it and was ready to shell out my $250 for the all access pass... until I saw the poor online video quality. From what I hear, the high res versions are much better; however, one of the reasons I loved the service was how quickly a video could be produced and then almost instantly placed on my website for viewing. If I have to mess with a hi res download to get a decent show and then have to manually put it on my website, much of the great time saving features of the service goes out the window. With this being said, my main questions are... is Animoto working on improving the quality of the online videos? If so, when can this be expected?

Thanks!

HoyBoy · November 4, 2009

Andy wrote:

what gallery did you use for your images?

This one: http://www.capturedimaginings.com/People/Imdieke-Family/10172036_yfMzA

AnimotoBecky · November 5, 2009

Hi Eric,

Thanks for your candor!

We are indeed working on a few solution to this issue, one of which will eventually allow for streaming hi-res. We also hope to allow direct exporting of the hi-res vids to SmugMug, thus saving you the time of having to manually download the hi-res vid and then manually upload back to SmugMug.

I totally concur that Animoto is a product that saves time, so we are continually working on features that will make all our features more aligned with our time-saving ethos, but these features won't be ready until 2010. I'll be posting in here whenever some new feature rolls out that may be pertinent, of if you're registered at Animoto, we sporadically send out e-mails regarding new features. Either way... you'll definitely be kept in the loop as we make improvements to our product.

echmrr wrote:

Hi AnimotoBecky,

I tried out Animoto for the first time about a month ago. I loved everything about it and was ready to shell out my $250 for the all access pass... until I saw the poor online video quality. From what I hear, the high res versions are much better; however, one of the reasons I loved the service was how quickly a video could be produced and then almost instantly placed on my website for viewing. If I have to mess with a hi res download to get a decent show and then have to manually put it on my website, much of the great time saving features of the service goes out the window. With this being said, my main questions are... is Animoto working on improving the quality of the online videos? If so, when can this be expected?

Thanks!

AnimotoBecky · November 5, 2009

Hi,

My apologies for this! Our TechGuys are certainly looking into why Animoto is pulling the Watermarked images. Right now when you send images to Animoto via SmugMug, this doesn't happen. However, when Animoto retrieves images from SmugMug, it does.

In the meantime, I'd encourage you to send images to Animoto while signed-into SmugMug to avoid this. However, we are working on resolving this issue!

HoyBoy wrote:

I saw this: http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1249718&postcount=19

So I thought we were good to go. So I went to animoto and made a video tonight, only to have it pull images with a watermark. I had gone in through SmugMug and while there signed up for the $30/year account. I then paid the extra $5 for the hi res version of the video. Then when it played I see my watermark. :nah

Then I came back to this thread and see that there is an issue depending on how you get to animoto. But I went through SmugMug so I'm really confused and a little unhappy.

HoyBoy · November 5, 2009

AnimotoBecky wrote:

Hi,

My apologies for this! Our TechGuys are certainly looking into why Animoto is pulling the Watermarked images. Right now when you send images to Animoto via SmugMug, this doesn't happen. However, when Animoto retrieves images from SmugMug, it does.

In the meantime, I'd encourage you to send images to Animoto while signed-into SmugMug to avoid this. However, we are working on resolving this issue!

Becky, I was logged into SmugMug and accessed animoto via SmugMug.

Ham1 · November 6, 2009

HoyBoy wrote:

Becky, I was logged into SmugMug and accessed animoto via SmugMug.

This is really weird. I have checked with our developer and rechecked myself and as long as I enter Animoto from the SmugMug "buy" button, I can't get it to push watermarked images.

In fact, I made a video with your photos just to make sure and there aren't watermarks. I will PM you the link.

SamirD · November 6, 2009

AnimotoBecky wrote:

We also hope to allow direct exporting of the hi-res vids to SmugMug, thus saving you the time of having to manually download the hi-res vid and then manually upload back to SmugMug.

This is good to hear. Once this is in place, I think I'll be ready for the commercial account.

SM partners with Animoto?

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