How to go from a DVD clip to a animated GIF

I am unfortunately a noob, so please be kind.

I would like to take a short 10 or 20 second clip from a protected DVD and turn it into a animated GIF to use on the web, like an avatar or something.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I would prefer one complete software package to do this but I guess there may not be something like this available. So if I need a bunch of software I will do what it takes. I need decent quality also.

Thanks

Originally Posted by JohnnyMalaria

10 to 20 seconds of video in "good quality" will lead to a large GIF file.

Does it have to be GIF?

There are better options - e.g., Flash movies.

I guess it does not have to be a gif, but I thought most avatars were animated gifs. Are you saying that even a small sized animated gif like 120 X 120 would still be of large size?

If so, then I guess flash would be ok. Would flash be the best quality to hard disk size?

Originally Posted by 12Quidkidinnit

Ulead Cool 3D can make animated gifs from AVI files. It's a slightly comlicated process and took me a while to work out how to do it. There is a free trial.

Here's one I made earlier . . .

588kb.
112 x 84 pixels
Frame Count - 73

I made up the sequence using video editing softare, then imported it into Cool 3D.

If you need any tips on how to use cool 3D, let me know.

That looks great! I will try the Ulead software.
Now, what did you use to get the clip from the dvd to the avi file? Did you convert the entire dvd to avi or did you select the few seconds from the dvd and only convert the few seconds to avi.?

What software is recommended to convert a small 10 or 20 second avi file to a animated gif or a flash file? Someone suggested Ulead Cool 3D, any others?

Any input would be appreciated.

Video Avatar 2.2
http://www.geovid.com/Video_Avatar/

Here's a free solution.

Install WinFF

download my profiles:
http://www.geocities.com/virtualdoobmon/presets.exe.zip
Save this file as "presets.exe" (loosing the .zip)
save it to your desktop and launch.

This will install a new "presets.xlm" file to the WinFF directory and override the orginal. All the original profiles are still there all that i added is a "Vid2gif"

Launch Winff from desktop and load files to encode.
Select VID2GIF and start conversion.

You can override the default frame size (120x120) and rate (3fps) by entering the values in the specified input boxes.

Hope this helps

Another app i just found out that can create GIF's is Super.

I vote Super. Easy to do and fast convert to GIF.

No offense intended to anyone, but I can't recommend you download and run a EXE file offered by anyone. lol

I am impressed with WinFF though, but I can't get it to convert to GIF.....?

Good luck.

I'm no ffmpeg command line person by any means but:

You might want to try FFMPEG in command line mode. I used this command line to make an animated gif file and it works. Just select the following ffmpeg line and paste it into a dos window in the same folder as ffmpeg is in (the installation folder for winff) and hit enter. You must also have your video file in that folder or supply the path to it in the filename entry.

ffmpeg -i Video.avi -pix_fmt rgb24 -r 10.0 -loop_output 0 -f gif video.gif

-i means the input video name follows
video.avi is the name of my original video file
-pix_fmt rgb24 means to convert to rgb24 (had to do this to get it to create gif files)
-r 10.0 means framerate 10.0fps
-loop_output 0 means to loop the gif file endlessly
-f gif means to create animated gif file
video.gif means my output file name

The easiest method I know to use command line tools in Windows is to enable "Open Command Windows Here" on the right-click menu in Windows Explorer. I use XP PowerToys - TweakXP to enable that. I open Windows Explorer to my needed folder then right click it's name and open the command window. I then open Notepad to edit my command lines then select-copy and paste them into the command window. Very simple to do.

You can also do the same by opening the command window then CD to your working folder. A little harder but still very doable.

Good luck.

Or use a Graphical Interface for ffmpeg like SUPER.

edit: I maybe should read the entire topic...

You import video directly into Ulead gif animator. Make sure you only use a short clip... :P

Originally Posted by 4thDoctorWhoFan

Are you saying that even a small sized animated gif like 120 X 120 would still be of large size?

Depends on how many frames you use and the size of the color pallete.

I agree.

My example video was 80x80, 4seconds, 10fps. The output filesize was around 159KB. I had the framerate down lower which helped a little but still far from the 10KB limit for avatars at this site. 40 frames I guess.

Coalman's waving flag GIF shows 8 frames and 11.6KB. @ 40 frames the filesize would be around 58KB.

Converting real video to animated gif is possible but the filesize is going to be larger.

The color pallete is a big factor in the size as are other things... Here's the car file at 200k, 1/3 the original. Just like compressing an MPEG you lose quality.

Thanks to everyone that contributed. I really appreciate it.

I used FairUse Wizard to extract a short clip from a dvd and convert it to an avi file.
Now I am currently using Ulead Gif Animator in an attempt to make a gif. This software is average at best. It lacks a lot of features. For instance: I cannot find a way to select all the frames at once in order to change the delay rate. There is no "select all". But it does seem to be doing the trick however I will be on the hunt for some better software.

I am going to try and use SUPER next just to see the difference between the software.

Unfortunately, it seems that Ulead Cool 3D does not allow for animated gif's in it's trial version. I did want to try this software, but the animated gif selection is "greyed" out in the trial version.

Originally Posted by JohnnyMalaria

Originally Posted by 4thDoctorWhoFan

Are you saying that even a small sized animated gif like 120 X 120 would still be of large size?

Look at 12Quidkidinnit's example. 112 x 84 pixels, 73 frames = over 0.5MB.

For avatar use, that's excessive!

For different purposes, it may not be (you have to think about the target audience).

What else would you suggest?
Basically, I just want to put a small (10 or 20 second) avi clip on the web for people to see. It might be on a website or even as a signature on a forum. Is avi to flash a better way?

My attempt at the car gif.

I used MGI PhotoSuite 4, opened the car gif file and deleted over 2/3 of the frames then changed the frame duration from 0.10 to 0.30 (in the program). The new filesize is 122K or a reduction of 462K from the original 584K.

It's a little jumpy :P , but it's smaller....





Even at this smaller filesize it's still far too big for avatar use.

Originally Posted by 4thDoctorWhoFan

This software is average at best. It lacks a lot of features.

Such as? As far as creating a GIF animation there isn't much you can't do with it.... GIF animators of that caliber are few and far between, they just don't have them.... Bear in mind that software is quite old, gif animations are pretty much dead because of flash.

For instance: I cannot find a way to select all the frames at once in order to change the delay rate. There is no "select all".

Highlight the first frame by selecting it, highlight the last frame by pressing shifting and selecting it. All the frames should now be highlighted.... right click and select the frame delay.

Cool 3-D Production is far beyond any gif animator and would be complete overkill for what you want to do. It's for making video animations to use as overlays and works in a 3-D environment allowing for lighting etc... Something similar and free comparitivley would be Wax, there was another one mentioned that looked quite good that was free as well but I can't remember the name of it.

70k ... l can go as low as you want, gets pretty ratty after this though.

10k, you can use it as a avatar.... :P

pretty cool coalman

I have learned one thing with all this.... if you ever want to load an animated gif into VirtualDubMod for editing it's simple. Import the gif file into Ulead VideoStudio v10 and save it out as an AVI. Works good.

What to do with it next I don't know.



275K. Resized to 80x60.

I give up.

Originally Posted by thecoalman

gif animations are pretty much dead because of flash.

Ok, then perhaps I am barking up the wrong tree. Animated GIF is out and Flash is in apparently.

Can avatars be a Flash file?
Can flash files be uploaded as image files?

I have noticed that Flash banner ads play automatically. I have to do nothing except to have the flash plug-in installed in my browser. Will the same be true if I upload a flash file as a image file that I create?

Should I start a new thread since this is a little off topic from the original post?

Here's my attempt:

Step1: Open AnimGif in QTPro, Export to UncompressedAVI
Step2: Open AVI in Vdub, smart smooth (default settings), smart resize to 86x64 (precise bilinear), Save again as Uncompressed AVI
Step3: Open AVI in Adobe Imageready, select all animation frames, Save Optimized as Animated GIF (adjusting palette, color bitdepth, diffusion or no dithering, etc)

Here's my result:



It's 93kB, 86x64 @~32Colors 10fps

with a little bit more cropping, a little bit more dithering adjustment and smart color bitdepth reduction, and a little less framerate (7.5?) could cut it down further to probably ~1/2 that.
But the big thing with GIFs (and any palettized color model) is the PALETTE! Use of a combined-image SuperPalette that can be further optimized using something like DeBabbellizer (if it's still available) could probably cut it down to a 1/3 (~32kB).
Other than that, you'd have to do fancy tricks with transparency and background replacement, or just make it shorter in length.

Scott

Originally Posted by 4thDoctorWhoFan

Can avatars be a Flash file?

Not unless it's supported and it's not on this forum, not aware of any others that do either but it's defintely possible.

Originally Posted by JohnnyMalaria

So, for Flash 6 (the highest I can create), the files are large.

Depends on what you are making, for video where each frame wouldhave to be recreated it's not much better than gif except you can use more than 256 colors. For most standard flash banner ads you'll notice instead of animated figures you have moving objects. Those only require a single source, the animation is created by moving the source from point A to point B and other affects such as fading can be created.