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Easy Guide to Making Animated GIFS. (2012)
- Thread starter weekend_warrior
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Thanks.
weekend_warrior
Banned
Looks pretty good. If you're not happy experiment a little. Adjust the framerate, size, colors, etc, until you are. It'll give you experience for the next gif. It's all about balancing the compromises to make the best gif, it's an art.
I wouldn't go that far, but yeah, it definitely involves balance. Just for fun, gave that same snip a shot. Smoother/less choppy, same mb size (bit less actually), but a lot less dither;
Apart from actual image dimensions, dither is what usually bloats the file size most. Compensated that for smoothness.
Complex Shadow
Cudi Lame
xxczx
Member
I prefer Photoshop since it's what I'm comfortable with annd I have to stick with a 1MB limit for Tumblr and Photoshop is much easier for editing and getting the size down. It's just about opinion really.
For saving frames, using avidemux is easier/faster but it's also a little buggy so having both avidemux and Vdub won't cause much harm.
For making the gif, not so much. GIMP is much, much better. Jasc Animation Shop can't do anything, with GIMP you can edit and do what people are most likely want to do, add text.
Yeah, not sure what you're using but the dither looks maxed out on yours. Messing with that and even web snap options, along with of course reducing the dimensions of the image, help a lot in trimming the file size.The framerate is what I was having the most trouble with. That, and having to slash so many frames to get the file size down.
A perfectionist could spend hours on this shit
Also, thanks guys for all showing me up :lol
And just for kicks (since I already have the file open);
SunhiLegend
Member
The framerate is what I was having the most trouble with. That, and having to slash so many frames to get the file size down.
A perfectionist could spend hours on this shit
Also, thanks guys for all showing me up :lol
Practice makes perfect. My gifs used to be very large until I started messing around with settings and various software, skipping frames helps alot. Figuring out ways to keep the file size down without compromising on quality. For large gifs you could make them black and white so you can reduce the colours. Dither settings also have a massive effect on file size.
http://www.abload.de/img/untitled-24h87z.gif
Edit: So many skyfall gifs lol
SolidusDave
Member
I usually don't add text, images etc. and just want to gif a certain moment/scene in good quality but small-ish file size.
So after I cut to the scene I want to gif in VirtualDub, I simply go to:
File -> Export -> Animated GIF... (set to infinite loop)
VD Settings to consider:
Video -> Frame Rate...
- Source rate adjustment: no change = speed will be exactly like of the source video
- Frame rate conversion: Process every other frame (divide by 2) = halves the file size while hardly reducing quality/smoothness. more than 2 can be used as well, but it will make it choppier (depends on the scene if it matters much)
Video -> Filters... -> Add... -> resize
- Relative (%): reduce to whatever you want, mainly with the file size in mind. Apart from the choosing the length of the scene itself, with this setting you can play around most to get the desired file&pixel-size compromise.
Alternatively: The simple 2:1 reduction (high quality) filter is nice if it fits your needs.
- Once the filter is selected you also get access to Cropping... option in the Filters window. Aside from cropping off black borders etc., this can also be used to get a smaller file, e.g. by removing unnecessary parts of the scene or just crop like 5-10% of each side.
For getting the videos itself I use the Freemake Video Converter software. It's my main video converter anyway but apart from being free it has the nice feature that you can copy-paste a link to a video from most websites and it then downloads the highest quality version of the video and converts into whatever you want.
Though for some reason the xvid encoded videos can't be opened by my VD, so I use avidemux to encode again with xvid... then it works. I guess I could also try to install some VD plugins to make it work with mp4s etc.
I didn't know that you can capture the screen via VD, will try it out.
This can come in handy for live feeds of course.
I usually go for 2-5 MB in size and atm I upload them via apload.de (unless they are small enough for imgur)
Some of my latest gifs of youtube videos (though I basically always use the same settings):
(2.3MB)
(6MB)
and one of a SP episode:
(3MB)
(or should we put the gifs here in links only to make the thread load faster?)
edit: does someone know why VD adds that tiny grey line on the bottom of my gifs? Some bug/setting maybe?
So after I cut to the scene I want to gif in VirtualDub, I simply go to:
File -> Export -> Animated GIF... (set to infinite loop)
VD Settings to consider:
Video -> Frame Rate...
- Source rate adjustment: no change = speed will be exactly like of the source video
- Frame rate conversion: Process every other frame (divide by 2) = halves the file size while hardly reducing quality/smoothness. more than 2 can be used as well, but it will make it choppier (depends on the scene if it matters much)
Video -> Filters... -> Add... -> resize
- Relative (%): reduce to whatever you want, mainly with the file size in mind. Apart from the choosing the length of the scene itself, with this setting you can play around most to get the desired file&pixel-size compromise.
Alternatively: The simple 2:1 reduction (high quality) filter is nice if it fits your needs.
- Once the filter is selected you also get access to Cropping... option in the Filters window. Aside from cropping off black borders etc., this can also be used to get a smaller file, e.g. by removing unnecessary parts of the scene or just crop like 5-10% of each side.
For getting the videos itself I use the Freemake Video Converter software. It's my main video converter anyway but apart from being free it has the nice feature that you can copy-paste a link to a video from most websites and it then downloads the highest quality version of the video and converts into whatever you want.
Though for some reason the xvid encoded videos can't be opened by my VD, so I use avidemux to encode again with xvid... then it works. I guess I could also try to install some VD plugins to make it work with mp4s etc.
I didn't know that you can capture the screen via VD, will try it out.
This can come in handy for live feeds of course.
I usually go for 2-5 MB in size and atm I upload them via apload.de (unless they are small enough for imgur)
Some of my latest gifs of youtube videos (though I basically always use the same settings):
(2.3MB)
(6MB)
and one of a SP episode:
(3MB)
(or should we put the gifs here in links only to make the thread load faster?)
edit: does someone know why VD adds that tiny grey line on the bottom of my gifs? Some bug/setting maybe?
lunchtoast
Member
Nice thanks to you and Sentry, going to try out the Mac way. I still await the day when a video player like vlc will have a gif maker built in. Set your in and out points, right click and you got a gif.
you may most certainly use Jasc Animation Shop to add text.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1NWD16frEw
weekend_warrior
Banned
I prefer screen capturing to a program where you have to download the video and use it that way. Screen capturing makes it easy to quickly make a gif from a long video, from an obscure source, or even from a flash game, animated banner ad, etc, anything you want.
weekend_warrior
Banned
jpeg is fine.
thanks
xxczx
Member
that'll be youtube, does it for me too so i crop em.
cool, i still wouldn't advise anyone to use Jasc though.
No. Thank you.Thanks bro.
Professor Beef
Banned
As someone who has never used GIMP before, how would you go about adding text to gifs?
Moar Bond:
http://i.minus.com/iPcUDdvqecWtW.gif[IMG]
Happier with this one.[/QUOTE]
This deserves better quality yo.
[IMG]http://i.minus.com/iH2rH0IMtBXY6.gif
weekend_warrior
Banned
How do i snap browser to left? i am using chrome. Also in the vdub window i am getting a double image side by side.
Snap to left/right is a window 7 function. Drag a window to the left on it snaps to the left side, drag it to the right it snaps to the right. I use it a lot because I'm on a laptop. You're getting double images because the capture area is too big, It's capturing the video window and showing it in the preview, then capturing the preview window and showing it again. Go to Video > set custom format to make it smaller.
8x the speed? The last window that pops up when you save as GIF should look like this-
Just set a smaller delay to increase the framerate. Or you could remove frames if it won't make it look choppy.
thanks it worked!!!Snap to left/right is a window 7 function. Drag a window to the left on it snaps to the left side, drag it to the right it snaps to the right. I use it a lot because I'm on a laptop. You're getting double images because the capture area is too big, It's capturing the video window and showing it in the preview, then capturing the preview window and showing it again. Go to Video > set custom format to make it smaller.
8x the speed? The last window that pops up when you save as GIF should look like this-
Just set a smaller delay to increase the framerate. Or you could remove frames if it won't make it look choppy.
Guys please help.
I am in Gimp and I opened all the frames of the video I've recorded in vdub. I want to crop all the frames at once to remove the youtube borders and video playback and the browser because all of that was also captured. I don't want to do this one frame at a time because there are hundreds. How can I apply a crop to all frames at once?
Edit: Never mind I think I got it. I selected on of the images and then I clicked "fit canvas to selection and all the frames were cropped down to size.
I am in Gimp and I opened all the frames of the video I've recorded in vdub. I want to crop all the frames at once to remove the youtube borders and video playback and the browser because all of that was also captured. I don't want to do this one frame at a time because there are hundreds. How can I apply a crop to all frames at once?
Edit: Never mind I think I got it. I selected on of the images and then I clicked "fit canvas to selection and all the frames were cropped down to size.
weekend_warrior
Banned
I don't think that will work. Just use the crop tool and make sure "current layer only" in not selected. That will crop all the layers at once.
Horse Detective
Why the long case?
The last gif I made before cs6 expired 
Based on the op tutorial.
Based on the op tutorial.
mysticwhip
Banned
you can't just fucking pist this shit and not fucking post the fucking source of thr e motherfucng shitThanks bro.
Made a choppy gif. Don't know how to fix. The delay between frames is too great even though I set the delay to 0 milliseconds when exporting the file to gif format. Also, in playback I found that a 4x speed at 60 frames per second was the best way to view the gif. How can I make this the setting for when I export it?
weekend_warrior
Banned
Yeah, most programs wont let you set the delay to 0 milliseconds, too much stress on the computer, try setting it to 30 milliseonds. And if you're using a delay that small you could probably remove frames and not make it look choppy.
Okay, I set this to 0 milliseconds on Gimp.
Here's what it looks like. I want to speed this up. Does anyone know how to increase the playback to 4x at 60fps?
HIGH DEF JEFF
Banned
I don't want to know what happens behind the Wizard's curtain.
weekend_warrior
Banned
You have way too many frames, nobody wants their browser bogged down from a 20mb GIF.
- Reduced frames by 2/3rds
- Scaled down 20%
- Optimized for Difference
You have way too many frames, nobody wants their browser bogged down from a 20mb GIF.
The result is a 7mb GIF vs 20mb
- Reduced frames by 2/3rds
- Scaled down 20%
- Optimized for Difference
Cool. How'd you do that. Yours is better in every way except a little too sped up. Perhaps 4x is too much.
weekend_warrior
Banned
Loaded your GIF into VDub, used the framerate tool to process only every other 3rd frame, re-exported as images, loaded those images into GIMP, scaled the picture down, converted to indexed, used the optimize for difference tool to reduce the file size a little more, saved.
megarockexe
Member
I had been looking for a solution to the VirtualDub recording bug where it would never stop recording. I finally got this GIF I wanted.
Not sure what I'll do with this, though...
Not sure what I'll do with this, though...
SecretMoblin
Member
I've been using Jasc because the interface is so slick and simple, but I'm familiar with Gimp for photo editing and I'd prefer to use it if possible.
Some questions for the Gimp-literate, though:
1. Easiest question, but something I'm too lazy to bother looking up: is there a quick way to view a layer individually? Simply highlighting it in the list of layers doesn't show it, and I'd like to be able to view each frame of the GIF individually to know what to cut.
2. Is there an easier way to "cull" the animation, and remove every other frame, every third frame, etc.?
3. Can you adjust the delay between frames and preview the GIF before saving it?
4. Is there a menu option to simply copy/paste text or other edits across all layers?
Some questions for the Gimp-literate, though:
1. Easiest question, but something I'm too lazy to bother looking up: is there a quick way to view a layer individually? Simply highlighting it in the list of layers doesn't show it, and I'd like to be able to view each frame of the GIF individually to know what to cut.
2. Is there an easier way to "cull" the animation, and remove every other frame, every third frame, etc.?
3. Can you adjust the delay between frames and preview the GIF before saving it?
4. Is there a menu option to simply copy/paste text or other edits across all layers?
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