Flixtime: Taking A Battle Axe To Animoto
For quite some time, Animoto – the quick slideshow service has dominated the “60-second video” scene. Embeddable videos from the site have found themselves spread widely throughout major social platforms and continues its increased growth. The general web user has stayed loyal to the brand regardless of the efforts of other companies such as Stupeflix and ClipGenerator. Now in recent weeks, a new competitor has emerged. Flixtime.com offers a quick, simple, and free way of creating video slideshows that might just put a dent in Animoto’s protective armor.
Flixtime’s interface is simple to use, although Animoto offers a more user-friendly design for the casual internet user. Their video timeline interface will be more appreciated by people who have used desktop editing tools such as iMovie and Windows Movie Maker. Even if you haven’t used any of these programs, Flixtime’s interface is still fairly intuitive. Its Media Lounge is full of stock images and music that provide a variety of aesthetic styles, moods, and beats — courtesy of Fotolia and and their most recent partner AudioMicro.
After registration, you’re taken to a workspace where you can create your very first video. You are able to upload your own images and videos or choose from a wide selection in the Media Lounge. Once you’ve selected your media, you’ll see it in the video timeline. You then have the option of arranging it in the order you wish. After you’ve finalized your files and arrangement, you can save it or finish up and render your video. Processing time is surprisingly fast. One of the upsides to this service is the ability to go back to your rendered video and edit if you need to make any changes. It may get slightly confusing since you need to manually change the name of the video to differentiate it from the original. Another thing that may irk you is the inability to choose which transition effects occur between your media.
Perhaps one of the better features of Flixtime.com is the ability to choose the resolution 640×360 and 320×240) and type of file (MP4, Divx, H264, FLV, MP4 iPod) you want after rendering. This allows you to download your media with these specifications and play them across multiple platforms. If you want to stay online, Flixtime allows you to share your video across all the major networks and over 225 more. They really had media sharing in mind during development and it shows.
If you’re looking for another way to create simple slideshow videos, Flixtime is a strong contender for your attention. This free service offers an intuitive platform while still granting you creative control of your project. It’s straightforward interface and rich feature set make it a very promising presence on the web. Let’s just hope it doesn’t lose sight of this once they come out of Beta.
Checkout this quick video we made in less then 2 minutes:
