DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY NEWS

Animoto Productions Debut Animoto for Photography

Award-winning video creation platform now provides professional photographers with tools to produce and market professional-quality videos

New York, NY, October 22, 2008 - Animoto, the video creation platform that lets users quickly and easily create professional-quality videos from their own photos and music, today released Animoto for Photography. Built on the Animoto for Business platform, Animoto for Photography lets professional photographers easily create unique, professional-quality videos that can be emailed, burned to DVD and resold, or distributed online via blogs, websites, social networks and mobile devices. Animoto for Photography debuts this week at the PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo in New York City.

"Animoto for Photography takes the heavy lifting out of video creation, allowing photographers to create stunning video in minutes and spend more time taking photos," said Brad Jefferson, CEO & co-founder of Animoto. "Until now, the process of editing photos into professional videos has been time-consuming and difficult, requiring expensive software. Animoto changes everything, giving photographers the fastest, easiest, and most affordable way to produce professional-quality video from their photos.“

Adding to the already popular Animoto for Business features, such as a royalty-free library of hundreds of pre-cleared songs, Animoto for Photography incorporates two new features designed specifically for photographers. 

- Photographers can now easily adjust the speed at which photographs are displayed in their Animoto videos. In addition to Animoto's default speed, derived from the tempo of the selected song, half and double speeds are now available. Half speed emphasizes each photograph longer and is ideal for wedding, portrait, and baby videos, while double speed creates a more energetic video, perfect for action sports or senior portrait videos.

- Videos can now include a custom "call to action" button at the end.

This optional feature turns an Animoto video from a passive viewing experience into an active marketing tool for lead generation. For example, photographers can create a button to "book appointment" that links to their appointment page, or one to "purchase prints" with a link to their order page.

"Animoto is a perfect fit for professional photographers," said award-winning wedding photographer, Linda Jennings. "I can quickly upload my photos, pick just the right song, and Animoto automatically creates a show-stopping video. And when the video is complete, I can easily share it in more ways than ever before: email, blogs, my own website, Facebook, iPhone. The possibilities are endless with Animoto."

Vicki Taufer, an international photography speaker & co-owner of VGallery adds, "The production value of Animoto videos is breathtaking and well beyond the video editing ability of most professional photographers I know. Video montages that took days to create now take only minutes, allowing me to create and sell more videos. All serious photographers can benefit from the power of Animoto for Photography."

Animoto for Photography is a subscription service that gives unlimited access to create, present, view, share, download and sell professional-quality videos. Subscriptions cost $99 per user for three months, or $249 per user for one year. With the subscription, in addition to benefiting from all the standard Animoto.com consumer features, photographers gain access to a large library of music licensed for commercial use, are able to produce videos with minimized Animoto branding, and are granted access to unlimited DVD-quality video downloads.

The heart of Animoto is its Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology that thinks like an actual director and editor using the same sophisticated post-production skills and techniques that are used in television and film. The technology takes into account every nuance of a

song: the genre, song structure, energy, rhythm, instrumentation, and vocals. No two videos are ever the same; even videos generated with an identical set of images and music will each have a completely distinct set of motion design. Videos are produced in widescreen format and can be emailed, embedded on any website, or downloaded in DVD-quality formats for display on computers, televisions, and even large projection screens.

More information about Animoto for Photography can be found at http://photography.animoto.comhttp://photography.animoto.com/.

About Animoto

The founders of Animoto Productions include veterans of the entertainment industry who share a passion for helping people share their stories and express themselves through online media by innovating technologies in the field of video production. Animoto Productions, founded in August 2006, is based in New York City with an office in San Francisco. Visit http://animoto.com.