A smiling elderly lady in a hospital bed grasps onto the hands of two sisters clad in white. The patient seems to draw energy from the two sisters, who smile at her. This is one of the many images of the Daughters of St. Francis of Assisi in Lacon, IL, seen in their new video, “Images of Franciscan Simplicity.”

“This video draws the viewer into a deeper life of meditation and service to God,” said Sr. Adriana, the community’s superior. “I hope that it inspires prayer and commitment to the Franciscan way of simplicity and love.”

The sisters wear a traditional habit and have regular times for Mass, Divine Office and adoration. The video has drawn 30 views already in less than two days. It can bee seen on YouTube. Visit the Sisters’ website at www.LaconFranciscans.com.

The video was produced by www.TreeFrogClick.com, our web promotion company that works with religious communities.

In the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL, the spaceship’s computer, says, “Dave, is something wrong?” Dave, in fact is thinking about pulling the plug on the computer, which controls every aspect of the ship, and HAL senses this.

This is what ran through my head while testing the online software of ArticleVideoRobot.com, an ingenious service that brings together text, sound, music and a synthesized voice to make videos. There is something wrong — we need the next generation of the voice synthesizer to make that part of it work well.

The software’s strong point is that video production is very quick and efficient. After playing around with it a bit, I uploaded a short article I had written on website promotion (see the PDF, Seven Proven Ways to Drive Visitors to Your Website) and made a three-minute video in 13 minutes. Much shorter than the 10+ hours it takes me to make a two-minute video. Of course, I would want to edit it too, but that was not allowed with my free two-week trial of the service.

Pulls It Together Quickly

ArticleVideoRobot breaks the article into individual slides, puts in headline text, and you simply add pictures and music. The problem is that the automatic speaking voice sounds stilted. I chose the voice “Brian” over “Dave” because it seemed better technically. There are two women’s voices to choose from as well. Some words don’t work well. The voice “Katherine” did a hatchet job on the pronunciation “Wikipedia.”

In all fairness, I have to say that you can upload your own voice-over, as well as photos. You can choose from their stock photos and background music selection, or you can use your own. There is a lot of flexibility. You can choose one or two pictures per slide, and can play around with which text is displayed. The transitions are chosen for you, and it all fits together nicely. I guess you could spell out the unusual words phonetically to get a good pronunciation.

The software can grab articles you have already published, and it can push the video out to 17+ video sites. A real benefit is that you can also download the video as an AVI or Flash file, something that YouTube does not allow. ArticleRobotVideo packages start at $47 per month for 50 videos, so if you plan to make a lot of videos and can figure out a good voice-over solution, it’s a good deal. It’s clear that we are moving toward more online video, so we need to keep up to speed about it all.