Pros & Cons of animated Gifs

Hi all,
Im trying to include an animated banner of just images, rather than a flash/XML banner - to make it SEO and iphone/ipad friendly.
Is there a reason why no one does this as an animated gif anymore? Does it greatly increase file size/download time?
Thought I would ask before embarking on a huge frame by frame design.......
Thanks

File size depends on your image dimensions and how many layers are in your project file. I have nothing against animated gifs if they are used appropriately. But GIFs are limited to just 256 colors whereas JPGs and PNGs support full-color (16 million).
You can achieve some nice animation effects on JPGs or PNGs with jQuery. Unlike Flash, jQuery is supported by iDevices.
http://tobia.github.com/CrossSlide/
http://medienfreunde.com/lab/innerfade/
Nancy O.
Alt-Web Design & Publishing
Web | Graphics | Print | Media Specialists
http://alt-web.com/
http://twitter.com/altweb

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How do you create an animated GIF in Premiere Pro?

I tried using Premier Pro to edit an animated GIF, but apparently that feature is no longer available? Is there another program that will work? Help Please....
Matt Perry
Edited by: Kevin Monahan
Reason: more searchable title

So, Kevin ... question to Adobe ... considering the ability to export a .gif is pretty important (.gif is one of the most popular formats on the planet), is Adobe willing to allow us Mac users to activate Premiere Pro on a 3rd (Windows) computer? I have an iMac (primary work computer), a MacBook Pro (my mobile backup) with Premiere installed. Now, because Premiere Pro on Mac does not support .gif, I have to have a 3rd computer (Windows). An unfortunate reality.
What can Adobe do for us users?
Thank you.
P.S.: Of course, it would be nice if Adobe just added the ability to export to .gif in Premiere Pro for OS X.

Animated GIF plugin for QT Pro (Windows version)

I have QuickTime Pro for Windows and I would like to know if there is a plugin to convert/export MOV files into Animated GIF files. I thought that there used to be a feature like this in a previous version of QuickTime Pro.

QuickTime can be used to open and play .gif files. No plug-in required.
QuickTime Pro can save them as .mov files and they can be added to other QuickTime formats as independent "tracks".

Animated gif selection does not appear in output menu of Premiere Pro CC?

I watched an online tutorial of how to make gif files using Premiere Pro CC. When selecting the output, an animated gif choice appeared in the output drop down menu of the Premiere Pro CC used in the tutorial. However, the output drop down menu of my Premiere Pro CC doesn't contain an animated gif selection. How do I get an animated gif selection to appear in the output drop down menu of my Premiere Pro CC? I'd like to create gifs with my Premiere Pro CC.

Steven,
In fact, here's a screen shot of the format selections that appear in my Premiere Pro CC. Ya see... No Animated GIF selection appears.

I would like to convert an animated Gif to .mov, will Quicktime Pro 7 do this? Should I spend the money?

Hi everyone.
I'm looking to put a few animations onto keynote and I'm making my presentation on PowerPoint.
I need to convert an animated gif into a .mov file and was wondering whether Quicktime Pro 7 does this?
Thanks

I need to convert an animated gif into a .mov file and was wondering whether Quicktime Pro 7 does this?
Since it appears QTKirk has provided the best answer for your specific work flow issue as stated, I will answer your more general question...
Yes, QT 7 Pro can open an animated GIF file and save it as an MOV file. At this time the real question is whether or not the MOV file produced is suitable for your needs. Basically the MOV file can be then then be played—but it only plays one pass in the normal playback mode. You can, of course opt to loop the playback which, for a small files, plays much as the original GIF.
Unfortunately, the "Loop" setting is not saved when the MOV file is saved, so this option must be re-initialized each time the MOV file is opened. This would not be a problem if all you are doing is openening the file in the QT 7 player and letting it play in the looped mode all day as some sort of display but would likely be an unsatisfoactory solution for sending the MOV file to someone else. You could, of course, turn the MOV file into a QTL file with the loop option set to get around this problem.
While I would be hard pressed to say it would be a good investment just for the creation of GIF movie files, QT 7 Pro does offer a lot of other features that make it a bargain utility for many quick edit requirements if you use/need them.

Problems with animated gifs in Premiere Pro

Hi everyone,
I need some help with my video project - I made some animated gifs that I want to add to the end credits. Importing them etc. works just fine, but in the video, the images always show up with a white background (white "box" around the animted figure), although the gifs definitely have a transparent background to start with. If I import them e.g. as png stills, they are transparent.
Am I doing something wrong? Or is that a Premiere thing&do I have to re-create the animations inside Premiere?
I couldn't find anything on this in the forum and I am grateful for any help/suggestions!
Thanks&have a great weekend!
Patrick
I am using Premiere Pro CS 5 on a Mac. The gifs were created in Photoshop.

Welcome to the forum.
When Still Images show as black, the first things that I investigate is the pixel x pixel dimensions of the images. With many Stills, even if they are within the allowed pixel x pixel range, one's computer's resources can be used up, and an alternate workflow might be useful - Scale the Images to match the Frame Size of the Sequence, prior to Import, in a program, like Photoshop. This ARTICLE might be helpful.
The second thought is that the video driver is no longer performing properly, and needs to be updated. What is make/model of your graphics card, and what is the current number/date of your installed video driver?
Good luck,
Hunt

Quicktime Pro to animated gif

I need to convert a flash.swf file to an animated gif. I read that quicktime can do it. Converting and swf to Quicktime is easy but all the posts I read about QT to .gif are old, from 2002. Can anyone give me a 2009 answer as I need to do this.
thx
rdee

7.3.1
Previous versions could open and play .swf files if they were "published" (authored in the Flash software) as version 5, or lower. Flash is currently at 10.1 (beta).
If you export to an "image sequence" you could use a Gif app to "animate" it. QuickTime Pro can't make animated .gif files. Only .mov files from still images.
The final file will be dozens of times larger than the .swf file and will not look as good or scale in dimensions.

I just bought the newest model for the MacBook Pro with Retina, and I am trying to save an animated GIF but it comes out as thumbnails, can someone please help, I am very much new to apple. Thank you in advance.

i would just like know how to save an animated GIF, thank you.

Follow the instructions to the letter here > iPhone and iPod touch: Unable to update or restore

Importing .GIF into Fc will not play the animated gif in output

I imported a animated .gif (attached video.gif) into Fc (of a sequence of pics I took saved as an animated .gif)
It inported as a "bitmap image" and upon export to swf it did NOT show the .gif as an animated .gif but just shows the first frame..
(It did not put this file into an assests folder...)
So I converted the "bitmap image" into an optimaized graphic...and NOW it DOES put the original animated gif into the "assets" folder with a Graphic1.fxg and video.gif in that folder.. and If I open the gif in the assest folder it plays it as the animated .gif it is..
BUT SADLY upon export to SWF it still DOES not play the gif as an animated gif.. just the first frame...
Can I do anything in the code to tell the swf file that is exported to play the gif in the assest folder as an animated gif not just show the frame?
I did the animated gif approach becasue I setup a photoshop cs4 file with a quicktime video as a layer and Fc only brought in the first frame of the quicktime layer..
Could the next beta of Fc include the ability to import and play animated gifs as artwork as well AND/or to import Ps Cs4 video layers as videos
So I would have to created a video page in flash pro and import that as a object? into a state?
(no experience with flash pro but just bought cs4 and will try to learn FlashPro overweekend)

Interesting. I don't think this is somethign you can do in Flash Catalyst. We have .GIF support in the Flash Player but I don't think you can use a GIF asset inside Catalyst. If you need that GIF to play you'll have to embed it using Flash Builder.
But Flash Catalyst will support video version 1.0. I don't think you can turn arbitrary layers into "video" layers but you can bring in video files (like .FLV) and then attach components to behaviors (like play, stop, etc).
=Ryan
[email protected]

Animated GIFs don't loop in exported movies from Keynote 3

I am just getting started with Keynote 3.0 and really like what I have seen. I created a series of slides and pasted animated GIFs in various places. They are set to loop on each slide as Keynote presents the slides. The slide show has preset transition and build timings and there is music playing continuously, throughout the show. It works quite well. (However, there is very intermittent choppy audio and video playback when there are builds or transitions occurring. Any thoughts on optimizing this?)
The problems begin when I ask Keynote to export the slideshow to a movie. The main problem that I am struggling with is that the animated GIFs don't loop in the rendered movie, regardless of which compressor I choose. I don't see anything in the documentation. I have also searched several of the discussions on making movies from Keynote 3 but have not specifically seen animated GIFs discussed. What am I missing here?
Also, I want to be able to play this movie on a DVD player at an upcoming function. Any recommendations for an approach that will be best? I have QT 7 Pro and the iLife '06 suite.
Thanks, in advance, for any forthcoming suggestions.
eMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6) 1.25 GHz, 1 GB RAM

My guess is, it's too much of a pain to have to calculate how many times it will actually loop and create the loops and then composite everything. Running it in Keynote just tells the thing to keep playing over and over till you do something that stops it. There's a BIG difference there as one is just being told to play, the other is having to be placed in a movie with an exact number of frames, so there are a bunch of calculations involved.

Animated gif import

Is there any other way to import an animated gif that import it frame by frame?

Not in iMovie.
GIF files are made up of "frames" and each frame may not contain all of the data from the previous or next frame to complete an image file.
I use GraphicConverter to export to other formats.
QuickTime Pro can also open and export GIF formats.

Stepping an animated gif, one frame at a time?

Does anyone know how to do this?
I want my own timer to tell it when to paint the next frame.
What I really want is an "asynchronous progress indicator", in other words, an icon that animates as long as stuff is still making progress.

Does anyone know how to do this?
I want my own timer to tell it when to paint the next
frame.
What I really want is an "asynchronous progress
indicator", in other words, an icon that animates as
long as stuff is still making progress.You can easily manipulate animated GIF images with Gif4J PRO for Java (http://www.gif4j.com/java-gif-imaging-gif4j-pro-library.htm)
For example you can decode GIFs using Java Decoder (http://www.gif4j.com/java-gif4j-pro-gif-image-load-decode.htm) and then modify delays between frames or even extract frames and animate them manually.

How can I edit an animated GIF?

is there a way to add a animated GIF into your work, when I try to add one I am told that it will be a single layer. I downloaded a GIF from the web and trying to incorparate it into a web site header.

Well, you are in luck, sort of. You have all the apps needed to create an animated gif. However that does not mean that the image you download was already or not. It could be a single image.
A couple of things to go over
1) When downloading from the net make sure you have permission to use that image before sharing with the public, as the image is protected by copyright laws in the US. (Images that state - Permission to use commercially, copyright free, common law licence - Generally are meant to share with the general public, granted that you post somewhere who you got the image from(the Least anyone can do it give credit where credit is due)
2)Since you have the Master Collection or the CS4 Master Suite, you have every app that is need to create your own works of art. Photoshop, After Effects, Premeire pro are all capable of creating animated gifs. With the latter two being easier than photoshop.
Since you have CS4 photoshop and this is the photoshop forum, we will keep it there.
The version of Photoshop that comes in the master suite is the extended version of photoshop which is require for most of the animations it can do. Though, think and am not certain that the standard version can create animated gif files.
OK, ok we got a lot of mumbo jumbo above so lets get into how to create an animated gif.
First we need to determine if we are editing an animated gif or creating one from scratch. To load an animated gif all you need to do is file>open then select the file. Simple enough.
The file will place each frame onto its own layer and if you have the animation panel open (If not select Windows>Animation ) Each frame will be placed there as well.
Lets say we are going to edit a frame or better yet introduce a new frame. In the upper right hand corner of the animation panel is a small icon. Clicking it will pop up a menu. In that menu select delete animation. Don't worry your layers are safe, it only removes the frames from the animation panel.
Now you can either change something in one of the layers or add a layer where you want the frame intoduced.
When you are done you can select that same icon in the animation panel to pop up the menu and select Make frames from layers This will place all the layers back into the animation panel. This has to happen in order to save an animated gif.
You can now use the File>save to web or File>Save to web and devices (This optiuon changed during one of the version, I don't recall so both are listed or look for something close to that)
Select Gif for the format then the save button, where you can choose a location and file name. It will automatically add a hyphen between any words that normally are spaces for the web.
OK, If you read the above, you probably alread realize how to create one from scratch. Just add a new layer for each frame and follow the steps above to add it to the animation panel and save for web.
I know it sounds like a lot, but once you have done it a few times, it actually fairly simple.
OK, Bonus round - What about After Effects and Premeire Pro?
Well both of those apps Use a timeline instead of frames. Which makes them much simpler and more powerful for animations, since that is what they are dedicated to do.
It is as simple as open the gif file, edit it, save it, done.
I won't go into how the timeline works as that would require a long , long post. But once you understand it, it is much quicker and can do way more feature wise.
One last thing, play around with it and see what it can do before commiting time to creating or editing a gif. It goes much easier once you get the hang of it.
If you have any questions, issues, etc. just post away...
Well, I got to go, I hope this helps.

I finished making an animated .gif image in FireWorks. My question is, how do I convert it into video so that when I edit video, that every video editing program recognizes it? Long story short, How do I convert animated .gif files into video formats?

I worked in Adobe FireWorks to make the animated .gif. What program do I use to convert the file from .gif to any video format: .mp4, .m4v, .avi, .wmv, etc. I want to convert it into video format, so that QuickTime Player plays the video, I can insert it into iMovie '11 and edit, and also insert it into Final Cut Pro X and edit video.

Thanks for getting back with me so promptly. It has taken me this time to connect with the proper people to find out the information you requested.
The camera used to film the class was a Panasonic AG-HMC40P, owned by a local cable TV station; they use Kodak video encoding software, and a SD card was used to store the video. The file extension is .mts, and the mime file is MPEG 2 transport. He said I probably need an AVCHD converter, and the Mac app store lists 8 of those options, 4 free and 4 for up to $9.99. He said I'll also need a converter for later plans of posting on YouTube or on the website, and while some of those in the app store might work for the later needs, he knows one app called "Compressor" that would work for the uploading later. He also suggested I could try renaming the .mts file to .MP2T, but he wasn't sure that would work.
They don't work with Macs at the studio, but I had thought I could have some lessons there in editing, and apply what I learned to my iMac and iMovie.
First, though, I have to be able to see it and review it!
Thanks again!

Animated gif in photoshop

Hi
I'm running Photoshop 7 on a MacBook Pro. I previously used photoshop on a PC.
I created an animation using layers, and saved it as an optimised gif. However, when I tired to upload it to MySpace it would load: error message said it was an unsupported format.
I didn't have this problem before on the PC - any ideas what is different or how I can fix it?
THanks
Seamus

Hi, my apologies if that sounded condescending. Indeed I'm getting the same error as you do when trying to upload animated gif files created in either PS CS2 or IR CS2. I don't know what this site's problem is, because my gifs run in any browser. I have found that myspace accepts a gif file only when I open it in Safari and drag it from the browser window to the desktop first. Go figure.
I know it's annoying to have to open every gif file in Safari and drag it from the browser to the desktop, but at least it works this way.
It might just be some optimization setting in IR, although I wouldn't know what.
Good luck

Pros & Cons of animated Gifs

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