Help to convert an Animated GIF to AVI

[lilpotato]

Hello,

I have an animated gif I would like to convert to AVI (see attached)

I have a problem in that when I use software such as SUPER C or Virtualdub, the framerate does not come out right at all. (either all the frames seem to be equal or they skip 2-3 frames or ends prematurely.)

The animated gif I have has individual frames that appear longer/shorter than others and are important to preserve.

Can someone please point me to free simple software that is capable of converting the attached animated gif to AVI (in high quality) while keeping the correct framerate in tact?

(please click on the gif below to animate it)

[GrafZeppelin]

The simplest free tool that I can imagine right now is Windows Movie Maker/Live Movie Maker. The output wouldn't be AVI though but you can convert it later. Other than that, you might want to try VirtualDub but I'm not sure if it accepts GIF or not.

Just curious, did you make the GIF yourself from still images or is it already made by someone else? If it's the former then you can use any of them and import the images to make a video.

EDIT: Lol, I just noticed that you've already tried VDub. Well, try Movie Maker 2.6 or Live Movie Maker 2012 then. IIRC they accept animated GIF and still images.

[lilpotato]

Hi, thanks for the reply GrafZeppelin
yes, the image was made by me. Even though it uses only 7 images with different display lengths, unfortunately it would be a bit complicated and cumbersome to calculate and duplicate each frame a certain number of times, rename everything and then import the still images through virtualdub, (when I could feed each existing animated gif through another program and have it converted to AVI automatically.)

I also have other slideshow animated gifs with varying display lengths I want to convert which would take me too long to redo manually

I tried to download Movie Maker but the webpage does not load for me. Can someone download the animated gif in my first post and run it through their program and let me know if their software can convert it properly?

attached is the AVI i get when i put it through virtualdub (all the frames seem to run the same amount of type - approx 5 seconds) I want each frame to display accurately like the animated gif above.

[GrafZeppelin]

Which page that didn't load? Have you tried this one? If it's not working then try this one for MM2.6 or this one for LMM2012. Sorry I can't test the GIF since I currently don't have it installed.

[DarrellS]

Windows Movie Maker does work and preserves the time of each frame of the gif. Save as DV-AVI and open in Virtualdub and choose compression of choice and save as AVI.

I use Gif Movie Gear 4 but it is not free. I got it years ago when it was only $12. There is a free trial if you want to check it out. It's 29.99 if you decide to buy it.

[lilpotato]

GrafZeppelin, thanks for the links! Yes the original page didn't work - it just forwarded me to a blank page. I did manage to finally download it but unfortunately when I tried to install 2.6 it says it's for vista (I am on XP sp2). When I installed the live version it says that it is not a valid win32 application (?) and closed.

I did manage to find Moviemaker 2.1 already installed on my system - and conversion from animated gif to WMV does work - however there was not many options in saving (only able to select from compressed WMV), and the video quality was a bit deteriorated so I was wondering if there are still other options?

Darrells, thanks - but the version of Moviemaker I have does not seem to have an option for DVI-AVI Unfortunately I am on a tight budget so I'm limited only to freeware.

edit: Darrells, actually scratch that, I have found the DV-AVI option however it seems to export at a larger size when I select this (720x480 instead of 640x480).

[transporterfan]

Video to Video converter. See the icon (bottom left of 'Video Settings') to convert to GIF animation.
Presumably, just loading a GIF animation and selecting AVI from the page will convert it the other way.

[DarrellS]

GrafZeppelin, thanks for the links! Yes the original page didn't work - it just forwarded me to a blank page. I did manage to finally download it but unfortunately when I tried to install 2.6 it says it's for vista (I am on XP sp2). When I installed the live version it says that it is not a valid win32 application (?) and closed.

I did manage to find Moviemaker 2.1 already installed on my system - and conversion from animated gif to WMV does work - however there was not many options in saving (only able to select from compressed WMV), and the video quality was a bit deteriorated so I was wondering if there are still other options?

Darrells, thanks - but the version of Moviemaker I have does not seem to have an option for DVI-AVI Unfortunately I am on a tight budget so I'm limited only to freeware.

edit: Darrells, actually scratch that, I have found the DV-AVI option however it seems to export at a larger size when I select this (720x480 instead of 640x480).

Right. That's why you need to use Virtualdub to compress it to a smaller file. XviD, DivX, X264 etc...

[theewizard]

this is a situation where i would try 'screen capture'/recording software

play the the gif and 'capture' a recording using a 25 fps frame rate

[lilpotato]

transporterfan, when I downloaded that program and imported the gif, it only exports the first frame no matter which output file format I choose

DarrellS, I get what you mean, but after the first compression using movie makerI, the image quality slightly degrades and the text becomes fuzzier. When i put it through Virtualdub a second time it degrades further.

[lilpotato]

this is a situation where i would try 'screen capture'/recording software

play the the gif and 'capture' a recording using a 25 fps frame rate

thewizard, actually that's funny because I have done that using camstudio - and it does give the exact quality result I'm looking for using the FFDSHOW output... HOWEVER, the timing issue is cumbersome because getting the video to start and stop at the exact moment is a bit of a task (I know I can edit the captured avi in avidemux, but again it begins to get complicated when I have to do this for many videos).

I was just wondering if there is an app that can do the conversion automatically in one simple step?

[transporterfan]

Ok. Had hopes for Video to Video. Anyway, just Tested it, FormatFactory does the job.
You have to manually set the frame size...I have no idea why there is no 100% (maybe it's 'default')

[jagabo]

The problem with VirtualDub is that it assumes the same duration for every frame of the GIF. But your GIF uses different times for each frame. VirtualDub calculates the average rate of all the frames: 7 frames / 30 seconds = 0.2333 fps.

[Selur]

btw. if the gif your use constant frame rate:

ffmpeg -r 0.2333 -i "PathToAnimatedGif" reencode.avi

would also work,...

[DarrellS]

If you don't mind shelling out $30 (I paid $12 for it years ago), Gif Movie Gear is one of my most frequently used programs. It will open most AVI and it will output to GIF, AVI, SWF, PSD, JPG, BMP, PNG, ICO, ANI and Curser.

I use it for creaing uncompressed AVI out of images and then using Virtualdub to add audio or whatever and convert to X264 MKV. Virtualdub doesn't seem to work as well with images on it's own (timing issues and missing frames) but works well with the uncompressed AVI. I usually leave the framerate the same (or make it match the audio) and convert to fps.

If you're worried about quality then going straight to AVI from Images instead of creaing a GIF would be better. You can set the timing of each frame in Gif Movie Gear. There may be a free program out there that will do the same thing, I don't know. You could google to find out.

[jagabo]

If this is a one off I would just load it into VirtualDub, set the source frame rate to 2 fps (ie, half second per frame since that's the required granularity) and copy/paste frames until each has the correct duration.

[Cornucopia]

The problem is you took what would amount to a shortcut by using unique frames and providing a variable framerate for your GIF. Since the GIF (89a) standard fully supports that, you've never run into problems when left in that format and run via whatever app that supports ani GIFs.

However, that all changed when you wanted to go to AVI. WITH VERY FEW EXCEPTIONS, video does not work well with variable framerates. So at some point your are likely going to have to convert it from VFR to CFR, and in doing so you will almost always encounter some fudging on the exact timing of things.

If you can live with that, I would suggest that your best choice is to bite the bullet and go back to your original GIFs and revise them so they don't make use of VFR any more.

So a file that was like this:

A-.5 sec + B-.1sec + C-1sec + D-.2sec

will have to become:

A-.1sec + A-.1sec + A-.1sec + A-.1sec + B-.1sec + C-.1sec + C-.1sec + C-.1sec + C-.1sec + C-.1sec + C-.1sec + C-.1sec + C-.1sec + C-.1sec + C-.1sec + D-.1sec + D-.1sec

Notice that I used the lowest common denominator as the timebase. You may want to do that, or you may want to play it safest and use a common video framerate timebase.

Then they should convert nicely & smoothly in many apps.

One way or another, there's going to be a little hard work to fix these.

Scott

[Budman1]

Another method if the Gif isn't too long or too many frames... Use Microsoft Gif Animator (free) and you can copy and paste frames with Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V and position with arrow up/down keys. Then select all and set each frame to like 50/100 sec for your sample and save. You will have a CBR Gif if you copied each segment the number of seconds x 2. It took about 5 minutes to convert your sample AVI (yes it imports AVI) to Gif with the rates correct.

You said you had one GIF and shouldn't be too bad but if you have a bunch it may be too time consuming. Just thought it might be another option.