animated coldplay gifs

[professa95]

how do you take a clip from a video lets say the lovers in japan video, and turn it into a picture for use in your signature/avatar? Any help is greatly apprieciated.

[Thompson]

I think you have to put it in some sort of movie maker, eg. the obvious 'Windows Movie Maker', and retrieve the individual frames,

then go about making a GIF from there using image ready or whatever

I wouldn't put my life on it though!

[nihcoldplay]

yes, you need a GIF program

that's a long time that I don't do a GIF

but I can help you if you want :)

[Serenade of Sound]

You need a program such as Adobe Photoshop or Imageready if you wanted to do something like that. .mov files are usually the best files to use whilst creating animations for icons, banners and such.

[RobC]

It depends on where you wish to put the gif anim , whether its for an area that restricts the size of the gif or not . And as above you need a gif anim program , when I last made them I used VirtualDub to resize the video and filter it any way I wanted (make it black and white , reduce framerates etc etc) , cut the part of the screen I wanted (save as an avi) and finally GIF Anim Workshop to make the anim and optimise the anim into a size that the forum I use would allow . Art package ? never used one ever on one .

Ive just uploaded an old one of mine to my avatar , 74k and seamless .

[Serenade of Sound]

VirtualDub is alright for the most...basic of animations. Yours is good, but it seems rather grainy to me. If you want a less grainy, pixelized effect then photo programs are the way to go.

 

But if you just want something entirely basic, then yes, surely it's efficient enough.

[ice water.]

I would say virtual dub is the least confusing way to go.

[RobC]

VirtualDub is alright for the most...basic of animations. Yours is good, but it seems rather grainy to me. If you want a less grainy, pixelized effect then photo programs are the way to go.

 

But if you just want something entirely basic, then yes, surely it's efficient enough.

 

I think youve misunderstood what Virtualdub does , it provides an avi file for the GIF animator program to work on (or if you want a series of saved jpgs) , this avi was Full 25fps in full colour . The payoff of size versus quality is the key , its grainy as I reduced the amount of colours used in the Anim program to make it 75k in size , I wanted smoothness and so the only way to make 75k was to reduce the colours used . I have a version of it in full colour / full 25fps but its massive .

Virtualdub allows you an easier way to reduce colour depth , frames per second , reduce resolution of the video , frame the piece of screen you want and cut out individual frames all in one stop , a photo program means adjusting each frame individually .

 

The way I make them is -

Use VirtualDubMod to input the mpg (this version allows mpg input)

Cut out all the video I dont want

Use the filters to remove interlace , frame the part of screen I want as a square then reduce the size to 80x80 (or whatever size the Forum uses)

Save the avi as Video Only

Go into the menus and reduce the fps to 12.5 and save another version ,

 

Load up GIF Anim Workshop and load in the avi

Copy the video on the timeline , then paste it onto the timeline after the first piece - then select that section I pasted in , then reverse it and delete the last frame (stops it slightly pausing when it bounces) - the pasting/reversing is to make seamless GIF anims

Then I take a look at how large the GIF will be in the program , if its OK then I save the GIF and finished

If its to large , then I reduce the colours used in steps until it gets to the size I want - if it down to 4 colours and looking shit , I start again using the second version I saved at 12.5fps , then repeat the porcess until it achieves the size / quality I want .

Obviously on this forum you can post big GIF anims , on other forums they have a 20K maximum , hence the above .

 

VDub is a video program and using it for this is slightly an abuse of it , but its far easier and free .

 

 

The thread was for avatar and signature , my method is fine for straight layout mpg->avatar/sig but to make overlayed video/picture like yours , Id make my anim as above and then use Sony Vegas myself and use the overlay function on it to mix the still picture and video (anything to avoid individually playing with the frames ) . These are the programs Id use as Ive bought them or they are free , for a free alternative to make video and still overlayed GIF for avatars and sigs (like yours) Im not quite sure what is out there .