how do you make gifs?

This Thread on phun helped me out massively
when i didn't know jack shit about making gifs...

Mastermind's Definitive Guide To Making Animated GIFS

All the Dl links are still avaible, might not be the newest versions, though...

Nonetheless, this method worked like a charm for me, hope this helps...

 

I use a program can Ulead Gif animator and GOM player to take automatic screen captures(setting the capture time at .09 seconds) at usually 200-400 frames depending on what's on. I also use a trial version of Graphic Workshop Professional to shrink the photos by factor to make the animations. One thing that's importent, at least on my computer XP I hit control, alt, and delete to bring up the windows task manager and go to processes. Right click on programs I am using at the moment and set priority to above normal, giving more virtual memory to that program.

In the old days before finding the free GOM player I used to convert video to the right size for the animation. Now with the GOM player I can watch the video and just keep track of what I want to capture with the option of brightness, saturation, and contrast on the fly. Over the past 8 years I've made quite a few animations of mostly tits and ass. Two years ago I came across a program called Nature Illusion Studio. You can animated up to 8 seperate things in one photo with many different custom controls for each of the parts you want to move. You can save in gif or in video and also add music on the video plus special effects.

P.S. Before I save the gif I use the optimizer wizard option to lower the file size of the finished file. Most files I save the file at 64 photo, it's also fun to use 64 line art to make some wierd effects happen. Small pixel and a short number of files I use a higher 128 photo. Drop the single files into Ulead gif animator and adjust the frames to a speed that looks good and I usualy tag(highlight) all of the frames (right click) all of the frames and (left click) duplicate frames then (right click) reverse frame order. Hit play and watch a seamless animation. It is also cool to open any gif that anybody else has made and change varibles around or save as stills. I'll find some of my works to share here shortly that I made in the past.

 

Anyone hav an updated tutorial?

... im pretty frustrated, please help.

 

I was thinking it would be beneficial if people shared how they make their gifs. There was some discussion in the celeb gif thread about overly large gifs and I was thinking maybe those kind of things can be optimized if we put our heads together. Or, even if you don't consider that a problem, maybe you can teach a thing or two and get somebody new into making gifs.

So, how do you do it? Walk us through your process starting from getting your source and editing the video all the way through outputting what you'd ultimately upload. Provide as much detail and as many links as you'd like.

 

I'm afraid I don't have a very good workflow for Windows, so I'm really interested in seeing what you guys do. I know there are web apps that can do it, but my upload speed really sucks so I generally avoid anything that involves me uploading large files. But, here's the way I approach it on OS X.

Getting the source

I usually start by grabbing the rough clip of what I'd want to make via VLC Media Player, usually because I was already watching it with VLC. You can "record" it and save it as clip.

Converting

Then, I tend to use Miro Video Converter and convert it to an mp4. There are so many video formats out there and a few of the tools I have tend to choke on some. But, mp4s seem to work well. If not with Miro, I'll usually lookup how to do it with ffmpeg, a command line utility that can handle most formats and codecs.

Editing and Export

If the video doesn't really require editing and I don't care about file size, I'll usually just open GifRocket. You just drag a video in and it converts it to a gif automatically. Sometimes I'll do the same thing with a command line script explained below.

If it does need editing, I'll usually go with an app called Gif Brewery. It let's you select the start/end time of the gif, you can overlay text, resize, crop, change looping, reverse, and set the output quality (frame count, frame delay, color count, dithering, etc). You can't do more advanced video editing like slicing two non-contiguous parts and joining them, though.

If I do need to do more advanced editing, I'll open up Adobe Premiere, simply because it comes with Creative Cloud and that's the only video editor I have. Then I'll take that video back to either Gif Rocket, Gif Brewery, or gifsicle.

Quality

As far as quality vs size, I mostly play around with reducing colors and such until it looks bad and then back off a bit so it looks ok again. But, again, that's for making silly gifs where quality doesn't matter so much.

Finally, I'll usually run most images through ImageOptim which tries to optimize it as much as possible without visually altering the file much.

Gifs from static images:

Sometimes I'll have a series of screenshots that I want to combine into a gif and for that I use gifsicle.

Gifs from screencasts:

Likewise, sometimes I'll make a short quicktime screencast and convert it into a gif using a combination of ffmpeg and gifsicle. I actually just use a little shell script function that somebody else wrote.

Photoshop

I have on rare occasions even used Photoshops timeline view to make gifs where only certain frames need edited in a way that suits PS.

Links:

VLC (cross-platform)
Miro Video Converter (cross-platform)
ffmpeg (cross-platform)
GifRocket (OS X)
Gif Brewery (OS X)
gifsicle (cross-platform)
gifify shell function (OS X oriented, but potentially cross-platform)
Photoshop's timeline/animation panel
ImageOptim (OS X)

All in all, my workflow is mostly suited toward lower quality reaction gifs for comedy or making mini screencasts as gifs. I barely know what I'm doing and make gifs infrequently enough that I can barely remember how when it comes time to. So, I'd be interested in seeing how you do it, what steps you guys take to preserve quality, or to make things easier etc.

 

get gifcam http://blog.bahraniapps.com/?page_id=21

I don't need to record or download videos. I put the gifcam tool over the video (such as a youtube video), then I can resize it and hit record when it looks good coverage.

I can record in a few different frames, add text, and resize the gif after the recording. The only thing I have not worked out it how to delete frames within the gif. You can delete frames to the start (such as frames 12 back to 1) or to the end (such as frame 12 to the end) but you can't delete frames 18 through 30 as a group. It has to be individual frames if it isn't to the end or to the beginning.

 

Thats the one i use too... ^^^...super easy!!!!!

 

I'm hardcore :

I use media player classic to save each frame as a jpeg, one by one;
Load all frames into Photoshop;
Drag each frame into the same image, so each frame becomes a layer;
Open the animation window and use 'make frames from layers';
Save the gif using 'save for web and devices' which lets me control the compression / colour pallet etc.

 

I haven't tried the Windows port of it, but that gifsicle app I mentioned might be up your alley, then. That's exactly what it does, takes a list of individual images and joins them into a gif. You could still open it up in PS after if you want to use "save for web".

 

gifcam is simply amazing for capturing. Thanks for the mention. However when it comes to customising the GIF i prefer to use animationshop 3.

 

click pics make big....

right folks, this is what i have been using since year dot....

i suggest trial and error before posting, i wont go into any great detail because everyone has to learn as did i....

firstly, KMPLAYER, free download, plays almost every video format on the planet, can use brightness, contrast, saturation and hue on avi, but for HD , you get what you capture, the settings i use are shown in pic, ( this is the best, after hours of trying ) play video, press start on frame extraction, then stop when you have enough frames for your GIF....

secondly, PHOTOSCAPE, free download. start photoscape, click on animation, ( along the top ) navigate to where you saved frame captures, highlight the frames you want to use, drag then into window in middle, in the right panel mine is set for most gifs, ( except for the amount of frames as this is an example ), as you can see, you can set the time and the size of your gif, ( i recommend 8 for the display time ), you can delete frames you don't want along the top of photoscape then you can start the animation, and if your satisfied then save and your good to go.

again, i must emphasize, TRIAL AND ERROR, you don't want to be posting shite....

by the way , when you have saved your finished Gif, right click on it and open with Internet Explorer, otherwise you will just get a still image.

if anyone needs any help, just PM me, but if i feel that you didn't even try and explore by yourself then i wont reply, teach youself as i have....

hope to see all the new giffers posting soon, enjoy....

 

I've been using the Free Video to GIF Converter. It's definitely not fancy, but if you have simple needs, it's very easy to use, and comes at the right price.

 

sorry, i thought i heard you say you paid for a gif converter, no, couldn't be, did you....

 

He means that free is the right price

 

just using any suitable software will get you a good one, have some knowledge from the web tutorials and initiate the process

 

When a mummy gif and a daddy gif love each other very much, they get together and produce a new gif.

Either that, or use Ulead Gif Animator and/or VirtualDub. The latter in particular is a really nifty tool.

 

InstaGiffer , very easy to use and free
if you want more than 12fps (default max) you can change that and more in the config file in the installed directory
http://instagiffer.com/

 

Just thought I'd throw out my own method:

1. grab frames from videos using "Advanced AVI Splitter." Sometimes I'll grab all frames in a sequence and sometimes I'll grab every odd frame if it's to be a long sequence

2. use photoshop to crop each frame and correct lighting if need be because "auto levels" and "auto contrast" work great.

3. assemble frames into a gif using Photoscape where framerate and size of gifs are easily adjusted.


The only hard part is manually cropping each frame, which takes time, but it trims the "fat" so you can make bigger gifs for any given mb size.

 

Spock's_Beard, You can import all frames in to Photoshop and edit them there. There is no need for Photoscape at all.

My method changed a bit after they removed the option to export a image selection from AviDemux.

First I select frames that I want in AviDemux, then I save them as a video file. I use Free Video To JPEG Converter to, as the name suggests, convert the video to JPEGS. After that I import the JPEGS in to Photoshop to edit them and then save as a Gif.