Animoto Upgrades Quality, Asks You to Pay

Animoto, a service that helps users make videos out of their pictures, today launches a new revenue stream: paid high-quality downloads and physical DVDs. Business-model-wise, this is similar to what personal media startups One True Media and Motionbox do.

For its new paid products, Animoto upgraded to 864×480 resolution and 24 frames per second in ISO and MP4 formats and is charging $5 for DVD-quality video downloads and $20 for DVDs themselves, plus shipping. Not cheap, but more probably exciting than whatever else you’re planning for your dad this weekend. (You are planning something, right?)

Animoto’s technology automatically matches pictures to the nuances of music (don’t call it a slideshow!). Another company that does this is muvee. Until now, Animoto would host your videos on its site and allow you to embed them elsewhere. Animoto is based in New York and funded by Amazon.