MPG to GIF

[Shopcat]

I have searched all of the tools and how to articles and can't find anything

I have seen Avatars and Banners that were captured from TV, but they were GIF !!

How is it done ?

[Skith]

Depending on what your source is, you need a program that can capture a sequence of images (frames) and output them to individual image files (bmp, png, or some other type).

You then need to crop the files to the appropriate size (an image editor with batch processing comes in handy). Then load the images into a program like Adobe Image Ready (part of Photoshop), Macromedia Fireworks, or some other program that can convert multiple images into an animated gif.

I am not sure what free or low cost alternatives there are, GIMP is a free image editor, I am not sure if it can do animated GIFs though, PaintShop Pro might be an alternative (~$100). I think Ulead offers some products as well.

In Fireworks, you basically choose to import a group of images as an animation, then save it as an animated gif.

[Hyper Shinchan]

I used GIF Movie Maker, but it's trialware.
EDIT: it seems that there isn't this software in VideoHelp lists, this is the link: GIF Movie Maker.
Cheers!

[Shopcat]

Thanks Guys, I have PSP with Animation Shop and have used it many times.

But no way can I see myself doing 150 frames that way.

Hyper I will try GIF Movie Maker, if I can find it, I didn't see it in the Tool section.

Thanks

[Shopcat]

Thanks for the Link Hyper, will go get it now.

[johns0]

You can load the video in virtualdub and mark the section you want and save as image sequence and batch process to gif with psp.

[Shopcat]

johns0, that is interesting.

Will give that a try also.

Thanks to all

[johns0]

I did an edit when you replied so use psp to batch convert to gif.Virtualdub only saves as bmp or targa.

[Shopcat]

OK johns0
Thanks

[p_l]

I use Ulead GIF Animator, which lets you import video, but you can find other, often simpler, apps for this if Google is your friend or from your old pal download.com.

Here are a couple I've made from videos:












And let me share a tip with you. Once you've imported your video, produced and resized your GIF, you often might want to optimize it, to reduce its size. For example, my second one above, made from a snippet of a video of the Six Feet Under intro theme, when the gurney wheel spins around, was for an avatar on a board which requires a very small file size for avatars, as is often the case. Although I gave it many tries optimizing it in Ulead GIF Animator, either the file size was still too big, the image degradation too pronounced, or both. Finally, I used the free online tool http://www.gifworks.com/, which seems to have the best optimization algorithms.

[Hyper Shinchan]

I think that p_I is right!With Gif Movie Maker I obtain gif with less quality then yours, but my gifs are longer.
Example:
EDIT: later I will check your tool (that you say it's also free, great!).

[Shopcat]

Thanks to all, I have tried all your suggestions and so far I like Vertualdub with PSP Animation shop the best.

[Shopcat]

I now use animation shop ver. 3.11, and don't need to use Vertualdub.

It is much faster than my old ver 1.3 that needed Vertualdub to extract the frames.