Create Family History Videos

One of the things I learned while attending the OCG 2016 Conference in Toronto was to continue to work on using video to share family stories. Thanks to a session given by Lisa Louise Cooke on How to Create and Leverage Your Own You Tube Channel for Genealogy and her suggestion of Animoto as user-friendly I took the time to play with it. The video took about 20 minutes to create with most of my time spent gathering the photographs and adding the text. Animoto is quite easy to use, they do put a watermark on the video unless you upgrade, which costs $13 a month. This is not a bad a bad price but if I subscribe I would have some projects already prepared in folders and do more than one at a time.

Once on the Animoto site and create an account you can pick a theme from the choices offered. Next up is adding the photographs, drag and drop style. There are also text boxes that you can use to proceed the photographs, caption each one or both. Animoto even adds the music for you! I am sure there are more options but these are a few I used in my creation. I was then able to download my video which I uploaded to my You Tube channel. It was very seamless!

Animoto does put a watermark on the video unless you upgrade which has different options but runs $13 for a month. Although not a bad price I think if I subscribe I will have some projects gathered in folders ready to go and create more than one at a time. My reasoning for a month at a time is I seem to go in waves as far as what I am working on and what my time allows. All in all it was an easy experience and I can see where I can improve and expand my video.  Let me know if you give it a try!