What's wrong with Solveig Video Splitter's GIF function?

[Bruce Wayne]

Sometimes it produces a gif that's unreadable. If I open the gif in Firefox, it says, "The image cannot be displayed because it contains errors." And if I open the gif in an image viewer that can play animations, I only see the top two thirds of the first frame. The bottom third is missing. Anyone know what the problem is?

[racer-x]

Never used that s/w and never heard of it. Try making the gif with something else like ffmpeg or a good free image editor like Gimp or Paint.NET. Here is a simple example made in Paint.NET....

[Bruce Wayne]

Never used that s/w and never heard of it. Try making the gif with something else like ffmpeg or a good free image editor like Gimp or Paint.NET. Here is a simple example made in Paint.NET....

Thanks but I'd rather continue using Solveig. The image quality of the gifs it produces is the best I've ever seen. Nearly every gif is virtually indistinguishable from the source video. Hardly ever any blotchiness or speckling. It's as close to perfection as a gif maker gets. Almost more like an APNG maker. The quality of the gifs GIMP makes is just too poor and 'giffy'. Haven't tried Paint.NET but I imagine it can't do a much better job.

[poisondeathray]

Did you try updating solveigmm ?

ffmpeg with the -vf palettegen method with no dithering added makes gifs about the same or better than solveigmm. The reason is it scans the file and selects the appropriate color palette, so it's a 2 pass method

Gif's are prone to banding along gradients. They only have 256 colors - that's why dithering is used - a pattern dither typically causes that "speckling" common to gifs. If you have content with many different colors and "stretches" the palette - it's going to look like garbage no matter what method you use. You can only do so much with 256 colors

The main problem with gif creation are the optimization. Nobody wants 50MB gifs. You want it to look good at small filesizes. You want the have the option to resize with different algorithms , to be able to use various dithering methods, to be able to use lossy settings to reduce the filesize. You want the options to make it higher or lower quality. You want the option to control display times per frame, alpha channel (transparency). Solveigmm doesn't have any options (I don't blame them, it's primary goal isn't to make gifs)

[Bruce Wayne]

Did you try updating solveigmm ?

ffmpeg with the -vf palettegen method with no dithering added makes gifs about the same or better than solveigmm. The reason is it scans the file and selects the appropriate color palette, so it's a 2 pass method

Gif's are prone to banding along gradients. They only have 256 colors - that's why dithering is used - a pattern dither typically causes that "speckling" common to gifs. If you have content with many different colors and "stretches" the palette - it's going to look like garbage no matter what method you use. You can only do so much with 256 colors

The main problem with gif creation are the optimization. Nobody wants 50MB gifs. You want it to look good at small filesizes. You want the have the option to resize with different algorithms , to be able to use various dithering methods, to be able to use lossy settings to reduce the filesize. You want the options to make it higher or lower quality. You want the option to control display times per frame, alpha channel (transparency). Solveigmm doesn't have any options (I don't blame them, it's primary goal isn't to make gifs)

Thanks for the info. I looked into updating Solveig. I already have the latest version. Could you tell me how to use ffmpeg? I've never tried it before. Is there a GUI?

[poisondeathray]

Thanks for the info. I looked into updating Solveig. I already have the latest version. Could you tell me how to use ffmpeg? I've never tried it before. Is there a GUI?

The gif's seem to work fine exporting from solveigmm for me. Maybe something about the dimensions or size is causing problems ?

There are ffmpeg GUI's available, but you probably still have to use the commandline to make your own custom preset (they usually won't have a "GIF" preset using palettegen ).

The 1st command scans the file, generates a palette

ffmpeg -i input.ext -vf palettegen palette.png

The 2nd command generate the actual gif, using the palette

ffmpeg -i input.ext -i palette.png -lavfi paletteuse output.gif

That will create a gif that is large (in gif terms), similar in quality and filesize to what solveig produces

ffmpeg has a few dither options, scaling, filters...etc... but cannot adjust display time per frame. It's a common method used to reduce filesize. Lets say you have a title image, or credits, or a pause in the gif . Without adjustable frame timing, you have to add duplicate frames to creating the pause, instead of coding only 1 frame.

[Bruce Wayne]

Thanks for the info. I looked into updating Solveig. I already have the latest version. Could you tell me how to use ffmpeg? I've never tried it before. Is there a GUI?

The gif's seem to work fine exporting from solveigmm for me. Maybe something about the dimensions or size is causing problems ?

There are ffmpeg GUI's available, but you probably still have to use the commandline to make your own custom preset (they usually won't have a "GIF" preset using palettegen ).

The 1st command scans the file, generates a palette

ffmpeg -i input.ext -vf palettegen palette.png

The 2nd command generate the actual gif, using the palette

ffmpeg -i input.ext -i palette.png -lavfi paletteuse output.gif

That will create a gif that is large (in gif terms), similar in quality and filesize to what solveig produces

ffmpeg has a few dither options, scaling, filters...etc... but cannot adjust display time per frame. It's a common method used to reduce filesize. Lets say you have a title image, or credits, or a pause in the gif . Without adjustable frame timing, you have to add duplicate frames to creating the pause, instead of coding only 1 frame.

Thanks anyway but sorry, that's all way too complicated for me. I don't know or understand anything about this sort of stuff. I wouldn't even know how to open ffmpeg in the command line. I just need something simple that works. I don't think Solveig's problem has to do with dimensions or file size. I thought it might so I did some trial and error experiments on that but then Solveig did something really odd. I loaded a video and selected a segment of it to turn into a gif and the gif was unplayable. But then when I simply cut out the segment as a clip and loaded the clip into Solveig, I got a perfectly playable gif. I don't understand that at all.

[poisondeathray]

So just use that as a workaround (cut the clip, re-import)

[Bruce Wayne]

So just use that as a workaround (cut the clip, re-import)

Had thought of that but that didn't work either. Some clips still won't convert into playable gifs. I'm trying to figure out how to use Avanti to create gifs now but it keeps failing on me. Giving me messages and warnings like "GIF muxer supports only one video GIF stream".

[poisondeathray]

Can you identify the characteristics that cause it to "fail" ? Is there some distinguishing characteristic e.g. maybe a specific codec, or container ? Why does solveigmm work for some but not others?

or can you upload a cut source clip that fails here ?

Consider filing a bug report with solveigmm, or it will never get fixed . When filing bug reports you need to provide test streams, as much detail as possible in terms of what works, what causes it to fail etc...

[Bruce Wayne]

Can you identify the characteristics that cause it to "fail" ? Is there some distinguishing characteristic e.g. maybe a specific codec, or container ?

or can you upload a cut source clip that fails here ?

Consider filing a bug report with solveigmm, or it will never get fixed . When filing bug reports you need to provide test streams, as much detail as possible in terms of what works, what causes it to fail etc...

I have no idea what could be causing it to fail. Especially since, as I said, Solveig could create a playable gif from a clip of a video but not from the video itself. If I had reencoded the clip in some way, that would make sense. But I made it with Solveig so there was no reencoding. That just really doesn't make any sense to me.

[poisondeathray]

I have no idea what could be causing it to fail. Especially since, as I said, Solveig could create a playable gif from a clip of a video but not from the video itself. If I had reencoded the clip in some way, that would make sense. But I made it with Solveig so there was no reencoding. That just really doesn't make any sense to me.

If your cuts are not on GOP boundaries, there is some re-encoding. For long GOP formats, there is temporal compression (not all frames are independent, they can rely on data contained in other frames). This means you can only cut on specific frames. If you use the frame accurate mode, there is some re-encoding (a few frames) within a cut GOP

Or a workaround might be to re-encode the clip to a lossless format, then use solveigmm to create the gif

Or learn about commandline usage (to start out, it's as simple as copy & paste, changing the filenames/paths to match)

[Bruce Wayne]

I have no idea what could be causing it to fail. Especially since, as I said, Solveig could create a playable gif from a clip of a video but not from the video itself. If I had reencoded the clip in some way, that would make sense. But I made it with Solveig so there was no reencoding. That just really doesn't make any sense to me.

If your cuts are not on GOP boundaries, there is some re-encoding. For long GOP formats, there is temporal compression (not all frames are independent, they can rely on data contained in other frames). This means you can only cut on specific frames. If you use the frame accurate mode, there is some re-encoding (a few frames) within a cut GOP

Or a workaround might be to re-encode the clip to a lossless format, then use solveigmm to create the gif

Or learn about commandline usage (to start out, it's as simple as copy & paste, changing the filenames/paths to match)

AH, OK, NOW I get it. So there IS some reencoding after all. I had just assumed no reencoding meant no reencoding. I think, of the options you mention, trying to reencode to a lossless format sounds the easiest and quickest to me. What program would you recommend for that?

[poisondeathray]

If you use the non frame accurate mode, it cuts on keyframes only. Then there is absolutely no re-encoding. But it shouldn't matter eitherway, your observations suggests there are other problems. I use solveigmm, but this is the first time ever for GIF's. It seemed to work ok on a few tests for me, so the problem might be local to your computer/install also

You might use vdub, or any ffmpeg based GUI and some lossless codec . Commonly used lossless codecs are lagarith, ut video. You can even use uncompressed video since this is just temporary. You might cut the clip with vdub for example, export a lossless video and import that into solveigmm

[Bruce Wayne]

If you use the non frame accurate mode, it cuts on keyframes only. Then there is absolutely no re-encoding. But it shouldn't matter eitherway, your observations suggests there are other problems. I use solveigmm, but this is the first time ever for GIF's. It seemed to work ok on a few tests for me, so the problem might be local to your computer/install also

You might use vdub, or any ffmpeg based GUI and some lossless codec . Commonly used lossless codecs are lagarith, ut video. You can even use uncompressed video since this is just temporary. You might cut the clip with vdub for example, export a lossless video and import that into solveigmm

OK, I have vdub but I understand very little of all that. Can you give me step-by-step instructions?

[poisondeathray]

1) load your video . You can drop & drag or file=>open video file. If you cannot open the video, install the ffmpeg input driver plugin for vdub, it can open almost any format

2) move the slider and mark in/ mark out. They are the 2 bottom right keys in the GUI, they sort of look like arrows. If you mouse over it should give a tool tip. Keyboard shortcut are the home and end keys. You will see the bar marked in the timeline of the section

3) video=>fast recompress, video=>compression . If you don't do the compression step and select something, it will save out uncompressed video. Or you can install some lossless codec like lagarith and select it

4) file=>save as avi

[Bruce Wayne]

1) load your video . You can drop & drag or file=>open video file. If you cannot open the video, install the ffmpeg input driver plugin for vdub, it can open almost any format

2) move the slider and mark in/ mark out. They are the 2 bottom right keys in the GUI, they sort of look like arrows. If you mouse over it should give a tool tip. Keyboard shortcut are the home and end keys. You will see the bar marked in the timeline of the section

3) video=>fast recompress, video=>compression . If you don't do the compression step and select something, it will save out uncompressed video. Or you can install some lossless codec like lagarith and select it

4) file=>save as avi

Thanks but I can't get it to work no matter what I try. I cut out a clip with Solveig, loaded it into vdub, selected Fast recompression, then Compression, then Lagarith Lossless Codec, then saved as avi. Couldn't make a playable gif from that. Then I loaded the original video into vdub, cut out the clip I wanted, selected Fast recompression again etc. etc., saved as avi. Gif was unplayable again. Then I selected Fast recompression and Compression again but this time selected Uncompressed RGB/YCbCr. Again, the gif was unplayable. Then I decided to skip Fast recompression and go with Full processing mode. Again, the gif was unplayable. Then I tried Direct stream copy but was told that the source video stream uses a compression algorithm which is not compatible with AVI files. Direct stream copy cannot be used. So then I just gave up. Interestingly, both times I tried to use the Lagarith Lossless Codec, I couldn't play the resulting avi in Media Player Classic Home Cinema. It would open in both GOM Player and PotPlayer but played very strangely, with slow motion video and breaks in the sound.

[poisondeathray]

Don't cut the clip with solveig, because if that is the stage the error is introduced, everything else will have problems after that. Try cutting the original long video with vdub (using the mark in/out described above), and exporting with vdub

What does mediainfo (view=>text) say about the original source file ?

If you can't get anything to work - cut a section around the area of interest, with non frame accurate mode in solveigmm and upload the clip here or a free hosting site

[Bruce Wayne]

Don't cut the clip with solveig, because if that is the stage the error is introduced, everything else will have problems after that. Try cutting the original long video with vdub (using the mark in/out described above), and exporting with vdub

What does mediainfo (view=>text) say about the original source file ?

If you can't get anything to work - cut a section around the area of interest, with non frame accurate mode in solveigmm and upload the clip here or a free hosting site

I think you might have misread my last post.

Thanks but I can't get it to work no matter what I try. I cut out a clip with Solveig, loaded it into vdub, selected Fast recompression, then Compression, then Lagarith Lossless Codec, then saved as avi. Couldn't make a playable gif from that. Then I loaded the original video into vdub, cut out the clip I wanted, selected Fast recompression again etc. etc., saved as avi. Gif was unplayable again. Then I selected Fast recompression and Compression again but this time selected Uncompressed RGB/YCbCr. Again, the gif was unplayable. Then I decided to skip Fast recompression and go with Full processing mode. Again, the gif was unplayable. Then I tried Direct stream copy but was told that the source video stream uses a compression algorithm which is not compatible with AVI files. Direct stream copy cannot be used. So then I just gave up. Interestingly, both times I tried to use the Lagarith Lossless Codec, I couldn't play the resulting avi in Media Player Classic Home Cinema. It would open in both GOM Player and PotPlayer but played very strangely, with slow motion video and breaks in the sound.

But here's the MediaInfo on the original video.

General
Complete name : E:\test.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4 / Version 2
File size : 1.81 GiB
Duration : 47mn 48s
Overall bit rate : 5 431 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2015-06-10 20:04:35
Writing application : mkvmerge v7.8.0 ('River Man') 64bit built on Mar 27 2015 16:31:37
Writing library : libebml v1.3.1 + libmatroska v1.4.2

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 47mn 48s
Bit rate : 5 324 Kbps
Width : 1 904 pixels
Height : 1 072 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.109
Stream size : 1.78 GiB (98%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : A_AAC
Duration : 47mn 48s
Bit rate : 105 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Frame rate : 46.875 fps (1024 spf)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 35.8 MiB (2%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

[poisondeathray]

Yes I misread it

The uncompressed version should be working. Hell the lagarith version should work.

Are you making full resolution gif? 1904x1072?!?

Can you upload the lagarith version here? Or zip up the uncompressed version then upload it here. At least we can rule out if the problem is your computer or setup, or something else

[Bruce Wayne]

Yes I misread it

The uncompressed version should be working. Hell the lagarith version should work.

Are you making full resolution gif? 1904x1072?!?

Can you upload the lagarith version here? Or zip up the uncompressed version then upload it here. At least we can rule out if the problem is your computer or setup, or something else

Yep. And yes, I know that's huge. I just like to test my programs to see what they're capable of. Do you think it just might be as simple as that? That the resolution is just too large?

[poisondeathray]

No, it's not a technical problem. I just made a 1920x1080 gif that worked fine with solveigmm. It's just that nobody would make an animated gif that size for actual usage

[Bruce Wayne]

No, it's not a technical problem. I just made a 1920x1080 gif that worked fine with solveigmm. It's just that nobody would make an animated gif that size for actual usage

OK. I'll try posting the lagarith and uncompressed versions then. In the meantime, here are my system specs.

OS Windows 8.1 with Bing 64-bit

CPU Intel Celeron N2830 @ 2.16GHz Bay Trail-M 22nm Technology

RAM 4.00GB DDR3 @ 666MHz (9-9-9-24)

Motherboard Acer Aspire ES1-511 (CPU 1)

Graphics Generic PnP Monitor (1366x768@60Hz) Intel HD Graphics (Acer Incorporated [ALI])

Storage 465GB Western Digital WDC WD5000LPVX-22V0TT0 (SATA)

Optical Drives HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GUA0N

Audio Realtek High Definition Audio

[Bruce Wayne]

It's taken me ages to post again because I've been experimenting. I created a clip compressed with lagarith using vdub. It wouldn't play in MPC. Fine, I hadn't expected it to. But then I switched from Fast recompress to Full processing mode and resaved the same clip and it still wouldn't play. BUT when I closed vdub, opened it again, loaded the exact same original video, edited out the exact same clip in the exact same way, and in Full processing mode, this time it would play. So why the difference? Why did I have to close vdub and open it again? Why couldn't I just switch from Fast recompress to Full processing mode and save a playable clip?

Another thing I've noticed. When I load the original video into Solveig (in frame accurate mode), select the clip I want, and save it just as a clip, it plays perfectly, with the exact number of frames it should have. I know because I load it into a video to image sequence converter and when I count the number of frames extracted, it's exactly right. But I just tried selecting another part of the video in Solveig, again in frame accurate mode, and this time when I played the clip, several extra frames had been added on at the end, with no audio. So is it Solveig that's buggy, the video that's buggy, or my computer that's buggy?

I did think of uploading all the test videos to here but they're surprisingly large. The lagarith video is 16 MB, and the uncompressed version, even in a TZ archive, is 35 MB. The smallest is the non frame accurate Solveig test version, at 4 MB. How should I post them?

[poisondeathray]

You can upload directly. There is a button "upload files/manage attachements"

If you can replicate the error with the 4MB file (ie. you can re-import into solveig and re-create a gif that doesn't play, or plays with errors), then upload that one

[Bruce Wayne]

You can upload directly. There is a button "upload files/manage attachements"

If you can replicate the error with the 4MB file (ie. you can re-import into solveig and re-create a gif that doesn't play, or plays with errors), then upload that one

Here ya go.

[poisondeathray]

Yes I get errors with solveig when exporting gif as well. Not sure why, since I was able to export 1920x1080 from another video. This clip made a 115MB gif. Realistically you would never use that. ffmpeg works for that video, so it's definitely something with solveig and that video, but not other videos.

[Bruce Wayne]

Yes I get errors with solveig when exporting gif as well. Not sure why, since I was able to export 1920x1080 from another video. This clip made a 115MB gif. Realistically you would never use that. ffmpeg works for that video, so it's definitely something with solveig and that video, but not other videos.

At least it's not just me. I'm trying to figure out how to use ffmpeg. I downloaded Avanti (an ffmpeg GUI) but every time I try to use that, I just get error messages. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

[poisondeathray]

At least it's not just me. I'm trying to figure out how to use ffmpeg. I downloaded Avanti (an ffmpeg GUI) but every time I try to use that, I just get error messages. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

It didn't matter if I re-encoded it to a lossless intermediate either, or slowed down the frame rate to 15, or resized to 1920x1080. It might have to do with duration and final filesize, my 1920x1080 test was shorter, final filesize was smaller. Eitherway, it's an unrealistic scenario



Ok I posted the commandlines earlier, here are step by step for ffmpeg. Copy & paste these lines into notepad, so you can copy & paste easily into the command prompt. For this example, place ffmpeg.exe into the same folder as the video to be converted. Later on when you get more comfortable, you should set the directory path in the commandline, or use an environment variable so you can call ffmpeg from anywhere. And later on you should look into batch converting and scripts which automate many tasks instead of manually entering or right clicking etc...

ffmpeg -i "solveig non frame accurate test.mkv" -vf palettegen palette.png

ffmpeg -i "solveig non frame accurate test.mkv" -i palette.png -lavfi paletteuse output.gif

1) navigate to the folder with the video to be converted
2) hold shift key, right mouse click, "open command window here", a black box will open, a command prompt
3) go back to your notepad file, highlight the 1st line and right click, copy
4) go back to the command prompt, with the cursor in the window somewhere, right click, paste. Then push enter. It will create palette.png
5) go back to your notepad file, highlight the 2nd line, and right click, copy
6) go back to the command prompt, right click, paste. Then push enter. It will create "output.gif" which was 125MB in this example, larger than the 115MB non functional solveigmm gif

[poisondeathray]

Resizing to 1280x720 worked , so I'm guessing has to do with a final filesize (not necessarily dimensions) limitation for solveigmm. (And even that is unrealistic, nobody uses gif's that size)