Animoto makes video edits a snap

— -- Tucson resident David Smith helps his real estate agent wife by making snazzy online photo slide shows of her listings, which he posts on blogs and websites.

He uses software from online site Animoto, which takes ordinary photos and automatically turns them into fast-paced, MTV-style music videos.

"With the effects you get, it would take hours and hours to figure out how to do it on your own," he says.

Today, Animoto productions get even snazzier, letting you add video clips to a montage in addition to still images.

CEO Brad Jefferson says the introduction and popularity of the iPhone 3G S — which brought video recording to the phone — helped urge Animoto's developers to support video clips now.

"The iPhone really changed the landscape of video," Jefferson says. "Now you don't even have to connect the camera to the computer to get to the footage. You just send it directly from the phone. That's taken a lot of the challenges away."

To make an Animoto clip, you register at the site, upload your media, choose background music from about 300 Animoto-supplied independent songs, then wait a few minutes for the software to render it into an online production.

The company, which has attracted 850,000 registered users, offers free 30-second clips that can be posted online. About 10% of users pay to make longer videos, for $3 each or $30 a year.

Animoto competes in a crowded field. Free services from Slide and RockYou have lower production values but appeal to the mass audiences who use social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. PhotoShow, owned by software giant Roxio, offers free, limited videos or unlimited subscriptions for $39.99 a year.

PhotoShow founder Chad Richard, who sold his company to Roxio in 2008 for an undisclosed sum, says Animoto's greatest challenge is getting people to pay. "A lot of the potential customers are the teens and college crowd, and they don't tend to have access to credit cards," he says. "And it's a hard model to get people to pay each time they go."