With Animoto.com, you can create 2 types of photo videos:

• Animoto Shorts (Free, but only 30 seconds long)
• Full-length videos ($3 each)

Animoto Shorts are 30-seconds long and perfect for 10 to 15 photos depending on the beat of your music. The free Animoto Short is my preference. 30 seconds seem short, but have you noticed how short people's attention span is these days?

Here's an example of an Animoto Short video that I created using photos from a birthday party:

When you are done, watch a video tutorial on how to create your own Animoto video.

Resources:

How to create an Animoto Video (video tutorial)

Families are becoming more aware that magnetic media (that's your VHS tapes, Super-8, Hi-8, Betamax) doesn't last forever. They have a shelf life of 10 years or fewer. Some would even say they start degrading after 5 years. If you can't make out the little baby's face (that was you) in the your parents' VHS tapes, don't blame their video shooting skills. Blame it on Time and the tape degradation that comes with time. As a result, families are rushing to transfer their VHS tapes to DVD.

However, when you convert a VHS tape to DVD, the video format is stored as MPEG2 format which is a compressed format. 5 minutes of uncompressed video format is 1 Gig. A DVD can only store up to 4 Gig of data but somehow it has managed to compressed up to 2 hours of video. Which is fine if you are happy popping it into a player, but not if you plan to cut out scenes, add special effects and transitions.

For that, you want to convert your video into uncompressed video format, which is the AVI format. Since the AVI format is uncompressed, it is large (5 minutes = 1 Gig), so you will need to transfer it to a hard drive.

I feel compelled to inform our readers about this because too many families get a false sense of security that once they transfer their video tapes or film reels to DVDs, their memories are preserved. Then when they try to splice out sections and edit it to show at a daughter's wedding reception, the video quality is not what they expected.

Not all VHS to DVD transfer services offer hard drive transfer. If yours does not, you have couple of options, to purchase a video capture/transfer device and do it yourself, or to outsource your VHS-Hard drive transfer to the professionals.

Related Posts:
How to Transfer Video to a Hard Drive

Picture Frame designs - you will find one that will match any living room, from simple clear frames to this handsome, wood, fashion-statement designs like the Philips 6.5-Inch Digital Picture Frame.

Want your digital pictures to come alive and greet you when you return from the office? The Philips 9-Inch Digital Picture Frame has a programmable timer to turn on and off automatically according to your schedule (and save energy).

Wireless anyone? With a wi-fi picture frame you are able send pictures to the frame wirelessly. They make it easy to display an ever changing collection of pictures either from your home PC or a shared collection (like a Flickr account). The USA 10.4-Inch PU10WB 256MB Digital Picture Frame is Bluetooth enabled, but you need to fill in a form that comes in the box to receive your free bluetooth adapter that you can just plug into a USB port on your PC. You can then "beam up" photos from your PC to frame.

Sizes are available in a wide range too, from little keychain picture frame, to large 14 inch frames. You can now get a 12-Inch Digital Picture Frame for less than $200.

The feature I’m happiest to see is the ability to play video. The Opteka 8" Digital Picture Frame plays MP3 and video. A word of caution: edit your videos, keep the edited clips tight short, and entertaining. Watching slow, boring unedited footage on a digital picture frame is like watching grass grow.

While that makes it very easy to upload your videos on internet to share with your friends and family, you may want to take an extra step and edit it first. Watching unedited raw footage is like watching grass grow.

To turn your flip video clip into an entertaining movie with nifty transitions, special effects, titles and music, you need a video editing software. The movie-editing software that I highly recommend for busy and time-pressed folks like us is the free Microsoft Windows Movie Maker software that is already on your PC.

There are several reasons for choosing Windows Movie Maker:

1. It is very easy to use, and if you record with the flip video, I know EASY is very important to you.
2. It is rich in features:  add music, pictures, titles and credits.
3. It comes included with a fun collection of nifty transitions and cool special effects. 
4. It doesn't hang or crash on you. Video editing software is known to be big memory processing hogs and prone to crashing. Not this one.
5. It is FREE. It comes with your Windows XP or Windows Vista software, preinstalled in the factory.
6. Bottom line: You can turn slow-moving boring raw footage into cool home movies to impress your friends and family.

The video tutorial below shows you:

• a quick big-picture overview of the software and
• where to find the software on your Windows PC.

Now for an overview of how easy it is to use Windows Movie Maker. Click the video to see a quick demonstration on how to edit your raw video and add music, transitions, titles, credits, and special effects.

If you'd like an easy way to master Windows Movie Maker, I recommend my
"Make Home Movie" online course. For $39, you get instant access to an online video tutorials course where I walk through each task step-by-step, click-by-click as if you were right behind my shoulder.  Why waste time figuring everything out yourself? The course comes with a 100% guarantee that if you are not making home movies by the end of the course, just email me and you get all your money back, no questions asked. Click here for details.

This service fills an important role, because it’s estimated that 700 million home movies are stashed away in closets and basements, many of them degrading away because of the limited life span of film and video. If you don’t believe me, here’s a video my father took over thirty years ago – I can’t even make out my mother’s face anymore. Do you have your wedding video stashed 'safely' in a closet in your bedroom? Don’t end up like this faceless bride video.

Costco charges $20 for a video transfer and takes about three weeks. You drop them off at the same place you drop your photos, but unlike their photos that get processed right on site, these video tapes and film reels are sent off to California. That’s why the service takes three weeks. Some customers are uncomfortable about that, some don’t realize they get shipped offsite, some are okay with that.

What do you get back after 3 weeks? You get back a gold-plated DVD and on the cover of the DVD box, they put little thumbnail photos of what’s on the DVD to help you identify it visually. When you play the DVD, you’ll see those thumbnails like on on-screen index. Click a thumbnail to start the video right at that scene.

One more caveat: This service is only for families who just want to pop their DVDs into their player and do not mind watching raw video footage. I personally cannot stand watching unedited raw video footage. It’s like watching grass grow. In my last post where I listed reasons why your friends and family don’t watch your videos, this is what I’m talking about.

If do you want to edit your videos, you want to transfer them to a hard drive, not to a DVD. This is because it’s very tricky to edit videos already burned on DVDs, and since the videos have been compressed for DVDs, the quality of your edited video will not be significantly inferior to if you were working with original source files on a hard drive. To transfer your videos to a hard drive, consider the options I listed in my post Transferring your videos to a hard drive.

Anyway, whichever option you choose, digitizing your videos is the only way to stop the video degradation is important, so don’t wait to transfer your home videos and film, and if you are a Costco member, you've one fewer excuse to wait.

His comment reminded me of my own similar experience in the past. My parents are abroad and I made beautiful videos of the children to send them. After many cross-atlantic calls to get them to watch it, they finally did and my dad fell asleep in the middle of it. How insulting. Don't they love their grandchildren enough to watch to the end of the video?

Why don't friends and family watch your videos? I have a few ideas, and it's got nothing to do with whether they love you or not.

1. Home videos are usually long and boring. To the parents, 10 minutes video footage of watching baby eat his peas is darling, to others it's like watching grass grow, death by boredom. Suggestion: Make your videos short and sweet, 3 minutes maximum. Even your 7-day European tour, check out my post on keeping your finished movies 3 minutes or less.

2. Got no humor. Have you noticed that the successful TV commercials are the ones with humor? Same thing with YouTube videos that get millions of views, they are very funny. Like this video on How To Hug a Baby (a Guide for Ambitious Dogs). Suggestion: Turn on your funny bone. Got not funny bone? Find humor videos on the web, watch how they do it.

3. No documentaries please. We play reporter with the video camera, capturing every blow, every turn our marathoner makes, every step up Heartbreak Hill (Boston Marathon), all the way until he disappears into the shower stall. Is this video for the archives or for entertainment? Suggestion: If it's to share with friends and families, I suggest it's more entertaining to capture more details about a specific incident than a long stretch of the event. That's why the Charlie Bit Me video got virally passed around to millions of viewers. Long generalities makes a good historical archive, detailed video clip of an emotion, an incident, an experience makes a good story.

4. It's not on their errand path. How many harried families take a breather, sit down and pop in their old home movies to reminisce? The DVD is much easier to pop into a player but it still takes tearing away from your normal routine to sit down for a home movie. It's not the natural errand path of busy families. Suggestion: Send it by email. I don't mean the actual large video file (or you'll lose even more friends and family), I mean the link to the video that you post on the web. That's just one option, there are many ways to share your video today, be versatile if you want your families and friends to watch your video.

Happy video editing. Remember, keep it short, keep it funny, keep it tight, make it easy for them to watch, and you'll have friends and families raving and asking for more. To do all that, you will need to know how to do simple video editing. If you've been intimidated with that in the past, don't. Today's software, such as Windows Movie Maker (free), and camcorders such as the Flip Video, for example, make the process a lot simpler and quicker. Also many video tutorials out there to guide you every step of the way.

Related Posts:
Flip Video Camcorder- Super Simple
How to Make a Home Movie

This short video about a toothy baby, Charlie, who bites his big brother, has been viewed on YouTube over 12 million times. The video made us chuckle, but if you were Charlie's parents, would you be concerned that the whole world knows about your 2 children by face?

I'll admit that I put my kids, nieces, nephews on YouTube all the time. And I'm not worried. Why? Because, according to Wikipedia, there are over 77 million videos available for viewing on YouTube. I figure the chances that my baby son's music video is going to become another Charlie, or even be viewed by my friends or family, is pretty slim.

There are precaution available to you if you are still concerned about sharing your videos on YouTube. When you first upload your file to YouTube, you will be asked to select from Broadcast Options - Public or Private. By choosing Private you will restrict your video so that it can only be viewed by you and up to 25 other people).

But then your son won't get to be as famous as Charlie…

Here are 3 Valentine's Day sketchcast to start off your creative juices flowing.

This first one, is just a simple I love You. But I dare say your sweetheart has not seen it expressed this way. He/she will not resist playing it over and over again.

Looking for everlasting flowers money will ever buy? These aren't only easy on your pocket (free), they will never wither away. Only a thoughtful and loving sweetheart like you would have thought of such a romantic gesture. That's the second example below:

Last example. Maybe she or he is not quite your Valentine yet. Maybe you just met her a couple weeks ago and not really sure how she feels about you. Or maybe, you guys picked a fight at a bad time - too close to Valentine's and now you need to return to her good graces. This Valentine question might just do the trick.

So go crazy! Get romantic! Draw a cupid, write a love poem, write her name with hearts all over, tell her she makes the best pot roast…. chances are it will be a truly unique and personal Valentine’s Day greeting. The site, once again, is www.sketchcast.com. After you create and publish your sketch, copy the link and email it to your Valentine.

Prices of these Flip Videos (now in designer colors) have dropped again at least $20 at Amazon.

Watch the video below to see a review by USA Today.

I never buy a gadget without checking out what users say about it. Click here to check out what Flip Video users sayabout this really simple gadget.

This video should be required classroom material for any college psychology class. How about you? Did you get the Twizzlers of your life or did someone talk you into having something else instead?

Click To Play

Related Video: How to Hug a Baby