Animoto makes your photos and videos into magic

This is republished from Building43, where Rackspace looks for world-changing startups:

Many of us take a lot of photos—either with smartphones or dedicated cameras. But how do you tie those photos together into a multimedia experience that you’ll really want to share? Animoto is answering that question.

Animoto creates high-quality videos out of your own photos, video, and music. “You upload your photos, or retrieve them from another site, or push from another site—SmugMug is one example. Then you pick a song, or upload your own song, and that’s it,” says Brad Jefferson, CEO and co-founder of Animoto. “A few minutes later, you get a custom-rendered video. The feeling that we’re trying to produce is that you hand in your SD card or your iPhone photo album to a real Hollywood editor, director, and producer. What would they do to create a narrative arc and maximize the emotion from the footage that you’ve taken?” Watch the Building43 video here to see how it works.

Business is good at Animoto (they became profitable in late 2008), and today they announce new partnerships with users of Photoshop.com and Lightroom. “What we’re trying to solve for is just getting Animoto closer to where the photos already are, so that people don’t have to think about going to our site and then re-uploading,” says Jefferson.

Jefferson says there are possibilities for Animoto on every screen, from a Facebook window to your living room TV. “We think this is how video content needs to be consumed, in a style like Animoto, that really pulls from Hollywood production aesthetics. There’s tons of distribution for that, or products it can be associated with,” he says. “Animoto becomes the movie trailer for your experience.”

More info:
Animoto web site: http://animoto.com/
Animoto blog: http://animoto.com/blog/
Animoto profile on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/animoto