It’s said that “pictures are worth a thousand words.”

Yet, somewhere along the way, somebody forgot to come up with a way to make them worth millions.

Until now !

A new start-up called Animoto marries TV-like production values (fast cuts, pans and zooms) with your digital pictures into little visual masterpieces for your website or blog.

In a word, they look nothing short of terrific. “No two videos are ever the same,” promises Animoto, which was founded by former producers for ABC and MTV. “We’re trying to recreate MTV-style videos and movie trailers, for the Web,” says Brad Jefferson, one of Animoto’s three co-founders. “We want to take technology to the next level.”

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Unlike many of the slideshow programs online (Slide, RockYou, PhotoShow), Animoto isn’t free. While a 30-second clip costs nada, a full-length video (like the one I’ve displayed below) only costs $3 to make.

Take a look for yourself and see if you think it’s worth it.

Pictures are worth millions when they dance — when they synergistically intertwine, stitch together, and are infused with cool affects and custom music.

A video like this energizes emotions and takes sentimental memories to the next level.

(( Watch it, by clicking the play button to the bottom left of the player, and see if you want to create your own personal montage video ))

Yes, you too can create high-tech videos with zero tech skills.

Here’s what a recent blog reviewer said:

“You don’t have to be Steven Spielberg to create professional video clips online… Animoto analyzes your images and the music you use and pieces everything together to where it all flows perfectly in sync.”

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, can be emailed and embedded in social network sites like Facebook and MySpace, and are now available in DVD-quality formats.

Here’s where Animoto ramps up what Heather and I like to call a business’s SVP (Super Value Proposition):

The cost to download DVD-quality videos is ONLY $5, and ordering physical DVDs is ONLY $20, plus shipping and handling. When you select the DVD-quality download option, a link to the file is emailed to you, offering both MP4 and ISO formats. The MP4 format is perfect for viewing on a computer, while the ISO format is for burning directly to DVD.

I clicked “Upgrade To DVD-Quality” on one of the video mixes Animoto created for me and within 15 minutes they emailed me the link to download the optimized MP4 file. I then took that file and uploaded it to our Web Video Zone account to make it viewable in a customizable player for online streaming.

CLICK HERE and watch our FIRST “Remix” of the blog-sized embedded video in DVD-Quality Format.

Animoto’s new DVD-quality videos are formatted at an 864 × 480 resolution and work seamlessly with both PCs and Macs. However, I used Web Video Zone’s player resizer to scale it down to 640 x 356. And while most online video plays at 15 frames-per-second (fps) or less, Animoto offers its DVD-quality videos at a stunning 24fps cinematic quality — the same frame rate in which movies and films are produced.

But, here’s where it gets even better:

We’re not paying $5 per DVD-quality video anymore. After seeing how crystal-clear they are, we UPGRADED to an Animoto commercial license. For only $99 (for 3 months), we now have the ability to download UNLIMITED DVD-quality videos from any remix that we have Animoto’s cinematic artificial intelligence engine produce.

Unreal, unbelievable, and amazingly awesome, we say.

Not only can you use their commercial license to create, download and burn as many DVD-quality videos as you like, you can add a “Call To Action” button at the end of your videos.

This optional feature turns an Animoto video from a passive viewing experience into an active marketing tool for lead generation. For example, you can create a button to “inquire about rates” that links to your appointment page, “learn more” to link to an information page, or the name of your website to link to your home page.  For instance, at the end of the embedded video above, we have LWL Coaching linked to www.LWLCoaching.com

With the commercial license, you ALSO have more SPEED CONTROL: You can easily adjust the speed at which images are displayed in your 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 image longer and is ideal for videos where images need to be viewed longer.

Here’s one of our mixes in DOUBLE-SPEED:

This is, without question, one of the most enjoyable Web 2.0 online applications we’ve used.

Yes, similar to OneTrueMedia.com in that you can request a DVD of your montage… different, though, in that Animoto focuses its talents on turning still images-ONLY (OneTrueMedia also allows video files) and making them dance into energetic studio-quality masterpieces.

We recommend BOTH services, yet will tell you, if you have a lot of photos (still graphic files like JPEGs and GIFs), and less video files (FLVs, MOVs, AVIs, etc.), give Animoto a try first.

One of the best, slickest, easy-to-use tools of 2008.

Your Partner in the Quest For
Living a Life Without Limits,

Filed under: LWLTools.com