A total YouTube fan? Been posting slideshows there for as long as you can remember? Tired of simple movie makers and the somewhat unprofessional results you’ve been getting? Maybe you want something different because you plan on giving the video as a gift to someone, your mother, your teacher, or maybe your best friend. For whatever slideshow problem you have, Animoto is very likely the solution to it.

How, you may ask? Simple: Animoto makes some of the greatest videos, and all of them with minimal effort on your part. All you have to do is to give it an input of your desired pictures and background music, and Animoto takes it all in for you, recognizing the BPM of your music and tuning the speed and movement of your pictures to go along smoothly with your preferred background sound. It also has several different styles of presenting pictures, as you will soon see when you yourself take a hand at trying out their video-making process, and Animoto swears that “no two videos are alike”, even though you input the same pictures, text, and background music.

Animoto lessens your time…thinking of how to design a video, giving you more time to think about the content that you are going to put in. You’ll need that time, too; despite its many features, many have found Animoto’s text bars to be lacking a bit in character space, since only about 20 characters are allowed in each the title and sub title in every text block. You’re also bound by a limit of thirty seconds per video if aren’t going to pay the subscription fee, but if you pay, you’ll be allowed to keep videos as long as you like, and even be able to control the speed from the suggested speed of Animoto to half and double.

Within first use those who are expert in editing videos may notice the lack of settings and such, but it is all just a part of the Animoto experience. The people behind Animoto just want you to sit back, relax and watch as Animoto renders its videos with its very own style. While this really can’t be recommended for control freaks who want to map out every nanosecond of a video, it would be alright for those who want a change from constantly editing your videos. And even if you don’t like the way your video was rendered, you can always put it through Animoto’s “One-click remix” to re-render it and enable Animoto to change the design, but still make it match to your song in terms of speed and motion.

And finally, you can upload your video direct to YouTube right after you finish making your video. So if you need a prettier video, or better picture transition, or a slideshow with more emotion and atmosphere with added background music, try Animoto. YouTube fan or not, you will surely appreciate and find use for this gem of a tool.