Playing round with content creation

I have no voice today, so I am at home messing round with animoto and Stupeflix to see which one is going to work best for introducing students to the idea that they can create their own little learning videos.

I made one in each provider, both on the same topic - Air Pollution. We're studying that, briefly, as part of our unit on fuels in Y10 science.

Here is the animoto one:



I like this because:
They have music available to use as soundtracks
Their mixing is pretty funky and I love the visual aesthetic
They make embedding and sharing really, really easy

I don't like it because:
It's limited to 30 seconds only
Images have to be saved to your computer, you can't input urls
If you put in too much stuff, they cut it instead of giving you the option to cut it
Their flash uploader is incompatible with my school laptop settings and the simple uploader is hard to find

Here is the stupeflix one - youll have to follow the link, because, as I say below, embedding is not it's strong point:

Air pollution video

I like this because:
You can download a copy to your computer
You can make the videos as long as you like
The visual is pretty clean and there is plenty of room for text
You can control how long each image set appears for

I don't like it because:
You have to use music from your hard drive for sound tracks - royalty issues, anyone?
Their flash uploader is incompatible with my school laptop and there is NO simple uploader to be found (I'll be telling them about this one directly)
There is no easy option to embed and only a few sharing options are available (I will also be giving them feedback about this)


So, as you can see, it's not easy to choose. I'll have to provide the students with a step-by-step guide anyway, and I'm not sure which would be most painful to write. I think I shall discuss this with my minions and we'll decide which one is going to give us the fewest headaches while providing the coolest learning experience for the students.