Give me GIF advice.

I used to make GIFs but stopped as my gif quality was shit. I used ulead 5 and it can only take certain video formats and automatically converts the video into a tiny, dark, grainy gif. I tried photoshop cs3 but it only lets me use the first 500 frames of any video I want to cut up.

So what is the best (and simplest) way to make good quality gifs? I always see loads of stuff I want to gif but am never able too and yet I see load of great quality and large gifs in here all the time.

 

With 500 frames you get quite big file.

You can select the frames you want in photoshop, not just the first 500 frames

 

I forgot to say please.

I tried it a couple of times there but it ws a blank screen and I couldn't see what I was supposed to be cutting. Then the file was a white screen too. It was an AVI, is there a preferred format?

 

http://www.ehow.com/how_6922148_import-avi-photoshop.html an AVI shout work

 

Just did try to import an AVI and i'm also getting a white screen

 

When i import a mpeg4 (Julia_Volkova_-_Didn_t_Wanna_Do_It_Explicit_Uncensored) and saved it as gif, it worked fine

 

To be honest I think the best way is to use another bit of software to cut the video and then make the gif in Photoshop or your choice of gif making software. Are you talking about making gifs directly from a DVD or Blu-ray? Also, what kind of size gifs do you want to make?

I don't know if it supports Blu-ray but if I was making a gif from a DVD, I use a free converter such as Freemake, convert to an avi with maximum possible quality, and use another free bit of software such as Virtualdub to cut the scenes I want to make gifs from. Then load them into Photoshop or After Effects to finish 'em off. With this method you'll be able to make good quality gifs up to around 15-20mb in size. It is quite a long process and is made faster by having a decent computer but it's a way of doing it without having to buy expensive software.

I tend to make gifs from downloaded scenes from the internet myself because it saves quite a bit of hassle with the ripping DVD steps.

 

Ah fuck it. I'm having nothing but annoying dead ends. Thank for the help Cold. But no more gif making from me.

 

By the way, After Effects seems to except more video formats than Photoshop so you may wanna consider downloading a copy. The other good thing with it is you can convert video with no loss in the Quicktime format to edit in Photoshop. Both programs really do go hand in hand for making gifs and the like.

 

Why don't you try with a mp4 file Jamms?

 

Als from a mp4 file

 

Found out why you get white screen Jamms, read http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100602090102AA095AN

 

avi, flv, wmv, none of them work. can't convert to mpeg or mp4. Thanks anyway lads.

 

You can convert with http://www.freemake.com

 

I use Aoao Video to Gif Converter. It makes gifs from most movie formats. Below is a tutorial on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gaRdCJJeQM

 

You could try saving the video file as an image sequence and then opening it in Photoshop.

Tutorial.
[video=youtube;4s3UKiczjAI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s3UKiczjAI[/video]

 

Hi Jammsbro,

First, let me say we all appreciate your huge contributions to this forum.

As to GIF advice, I agree with Wayne666. Individual frames are the way to go. When possible, I use VirtualDub/Export/ImageSequence in PNG format. PNG gives you no loss of quality with a smaller size than BMP. Otherwise I frame capture with VLC or VideReDo TV suite. Then I load the frames in a folder and play them with Irfanview. This gives you a quick idea of whether the GIF idea is worth pursuing. Some clips have duplicate frames which are easier to find with caps. Frame caps are easier to loop. With frames you can stop camera panning motion. You can use all frames forward and skip some frames backward. If you use two scenes you can easily crop/resize one of them to fit the other's size. All things that would be more difficult with a clip. Plus there are a lot more filters/manipulations available for individual pic enhancement than for clips. Use the photoshop CS3 actions/batch feature to quickly enhance your caps.

As to only 500 frames I totally agree with 'Cold As Ice'. I understand that you are only saying CS3 just limits you to the first 500 frames but too many frames is a common mistake with GIFs. For example, I tested a 20MB 720x576p video with 637 frames. I extracted 500 frames, cropped them to 700x400p resulting in a 65MB GIF. The clip has 32000 colors (vs a GIF with 256 colors), more frames, smoother motion and better resolution and takes less than one third the bandwidth. I don't see the point of taking a clip and just degrading it into a GIF. GIF's are cool when you can highlight a half-second of motion or loop a quick scene that would go by too fast on a video. Otherwise give me an HD video, not a dozen GIFS.

Here's an example of where frames rule... This GIF (below) of Nadine Velazquez is not a loop. It is one scene, repeated. To find where the sequence flows naturally (without a jerky repeat) would be almost impossible without looking at the frame caps. I capped 36 frames and used 25...





PS I joined Phun because I was intrigued by Mastermind2000's animated GIF's. I used to go by Gifster.

 

Digital Media Converter is a good free audio video converter software that also converts every type of media file. No adware, and completely virus free. Supports almost any file format and it is a fast converter. It's perfect for converting to high quality AVI to grab GIF's from.