Product videos are great to use on your web site or as a marketing tool on other sites. They can highlight your products, your staff, your business practices and more. You can create videos from photos or video footage that you’ve shot. Many computers come with video editing software preloaded, such as Windows Movie Maker or iMovie for Mac. You can also purchase more advanced video editing software such as Final Cut and Premiere.

Another option is Animoto, an online video tool that produces a professional looking video from your photos. Animoto if free to use for 30 second videos and only $3 for longer videos. At this time, Animoto only works with photos, and only in .gif and .jpg format. Upload photos from your computer or import them from Flickr and other online photo sites. Currently, you cannot add text to your video but it is something Animoto plans to add down the line. For now, you can add text to your photos in your graphics editor. You can also add music to your video either by uploading your own video or using music tracks provided by Animoto.

Just this morning, I created the 30 second movie you see below by using Animoto. It took a bit of adjusting to get the frames as I wanted, but all in all a pretty good experience. Adding text to my photos in Photoshop and then creating the movie in Animoto took roughly about an hour. It would have taken much less time with a random display of the images as it’s a bit fussy with ordered frames. I cropped my photos a tad small too. Had I made them larger than I needed, the image quality would be better.

Once you’ve created your video, you can easily upload it to YouTube, Facebook or other video sharing sites or download it to your computer.

While there are definitely things about the application that I would change, I think it’s a great tool and fun to use as well. Play around with Animoto for yourself to see what you think. I found a great tutorial to get you started.