Animoto brings the holidays to video

Animoto, a company that creates videos from a user's photos and music on-the-fly, announced Tuesday that it has added new features to its software that will turn its videos into online holiday greetings.

According to the company, the new holiday feature will use a snowscape to set the scene for the greeting and with the help of its new text feature, users can add captioning to detail events.

In order to create the holiday videos, users can upload photos using Animoto's service and click the "Santa" button, which turns the video into a holiday greeting. A new holiday genre will be added to Animoto's music library so users can pick the holiday song they wish to have played during the video.

Animoto's service is stellar. I've used the site to create videos on a number of occasions and each time, the videos are unique and attractive. The site allows you to upload images and choose music, but its Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology, which acts as the director and editor, will do the rest. That said, creating videos on the service can be a little pricey and unfortunately, Animoto didn't share holiday generosity with its new offering.

Full-length videos cost $3 and annual subscriptions to create an unlimited number of full-length videos will cost $30. Any video that is 30 seconds or less will be free. Animoto claims all of the videos will be DVD-quality and can be viewed on HDTVs or projectors.