A lot of you have gotten animated gif fever of late here on XS. A number of people have expressed interest in learning how to create their own animated avatars and signatures. Adobe ImageReady is the ultimate weapon for those who want animated gifs. The only limits to what you can do are your imagination and patience. This tutorial will cover the basics of creating amd compressing animated gifs while preserving an acceptable level of quality. Getting your clips down to a manageable size and joining them together can be done in a multitude of ways. In this tutorial, I will use Allok Video Splitter and Windows Movie Maker to create and join clips. There are several different apps which split and join video files, add text and different video effects, find which ones work best for you. I settled on these two apps for ease of use and support of different video formats. By no means are these the only apps that will work for creating video sigs, just the two I've grown accustom to.

What's Required

Allok Video Splitter (or any video splitter): http://www.alloksoft.com/allok_vsplitter.exe

Windows Movie Maker (comes with Windows XP) or video editing app of choice Get Windows Movie Maker here: http://dw.com.com/redir?pid=10187903...-10187903.html

Adobe ImageReady CS2 (Comes With Photoshop): http://www.filehippo.com/download/82...a724/download/

DV Codec: http://www.free-codecs.com/download_...hp?d=3121&s=59

Quicktime Codec: http://www.free-codecs.com/download_...hp?d=3389&s=66


Part I. Creating the Video Clips

1. Open allok Video splitter. Click open to load your clip.



2. Browse to your video file and double click it.



3. Use the slider to go to the portion of the video which contains the clip you wish to add to a sig. Click mark start time.



4. Use the skip forward and back by a tenth of a second button to select exactly the portion of the sig you wish to add to a clip. Keep moving forward until the entire section you want to use is selected. Click mark end time. Note: This feature is one reason I use Allok, given sig restrictions on most sites, the user needs zero extraneous frames. Pausing the clip and using the skip forward and back tenth of a second buttons allows the user to add only the portion of the clip which is to added to the video sig.



5. Once the desired section is marked off, click split. Note: The user has the option to select several different output formats. In this tutorial I use Windows Movie Maker to join clips, so I select wmv as an output format. Windows Movie Maker handles wmv files well, adjust the output format as needed depending on the video editing program used.



6. The clip will then split into the selected output format.



7. Repeat steps 1-6 as necessary until all the different sections to be added to the video sig are completed.

Part II. Joining the Clips in Windows Movie Maker and Adding Text

1. Open Windows Movie Maker.

2. Under View, make sure the task pane is selected as being visible. Click import video.



3. Browse to the clip(s) you wish to add and double click them. Windows Movie Maker will add one clip at a time. So the clips will be need to imported and added to the timeline individually.



4. Right click the clip and click add to timeline.



5. Repeate steps 3 and 4 until all the desired clips have been added to the timeline.

6. Once finished, the timeline will look something like this:



7. Click the rewind button in the timeline to insure the clip is rewound all the way to the beginning.

8. To add text, go to Tools-->Titles and Credits.



9. This menu will appear, select the desired option. In this guide, titles and credits wil be added on the clip. Click titles and credits on the selected clip.



10. Type the text to be added in the box. There are two boxes. Seperate text can be added to the bottom box for use with certain text animations. The text won't show for each animation, select the desired animation and preview it to see if the text in the bottom box will show up.



11. Click change text font and color. The following menu will appear:



12. From here adjust the text color, size, position, font, and transparency as needed. Once finished, click change title animation. This menu will appear:



13. There are several different animations to choose from, click the animation to preview it. Once finished, click done, add title to movie.

14. Repeat as needed until all the desired text has been added. Go to File-->Save Movie File.



15. This menu will appear:



Click a location and click next.

16. The following menu will appear. Select a name and location for your file. Click next.



17. Tick the other settings box, select dv-avi from the drop down menu, and click next. Note: Dv (uncompressed) avi files are the only types of avi files compatible with Adobe ImageReady. The video will then be saved in dv-avi format. To save avi files as uncompressed (dv) avi files, you'll need the dv-avi codec. Get it here: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...c_DV_Codec.htm



18. The movie will be saved in dv-avi format.



Part III- Cutting Down Frames and Converting Avi to Gif

Before beginning, be sure to have the necessary windows open in ImageReady. These are the Windows I typically use.



1. Open Image Ready.

2. Go to File-->Open. Browse to the avi file you wish to import. Note: For ImageReady to support avi files, the quicktime codec must be installed. Get Quicktime alternative here:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...lternative.htm



3. Double click the file or single click and hit open. This menu will appear:



4. That will bring up the Open Movie Menu. There are a couple options available at this menu. The user has the ability to import the entire clip, a section of the clip, or every x amount of frames, selectable from the dropdown menu under the "limit to every frame" box. The following section covers importing a selected range only. For maximum quality, it is recommended to import every frame or second frame. This comes down to user preference. The more frames to pick through, the better the quality and smoothness of the clip, but the longer it will take to make a final decision regarding frames.

Importing Only a Selected Range:

Check the import selected range box.

Use the mouse to move to the desired start point. Hold shift once you reach it. While holding shift, move the mouse to the desired end point. Once you reach the end point, release shift.

2. Click okay when finished.

3. The file will then be imported into ImageReady according to the user specifications. The length of time will vary according to how many frames were selected.

4. The movie will be set at 720x480 resolution by default.

5. The animation window is the key to Adobe ImageReady. From here frames are deleted, copied reordered, the time delay is set, and the animation can be previewed according to the current frame order. Make sure it's enabled under Window-->Animation at the top of the program.

Here is a brief explanation of the different functions of the animation window.

The Animation Window

The animation window is where you can navigate between frames, add, duplicate, delete selected frames, and preview your animation. This section will cover the basic functions of the animation window.



1. The arrow button in the center is the play button. To select multiple frames, hold ctrl+left click to select frames individually or hold shift+left click to select a range of frames, starting at the first desired frame to the last desired frame.

2. The left and right arrow buttons on either side of the play button select the previous or next frame, repectively. You can also use the mouse to scroll through the animation window to the desired frame.

3. The square box with the arrow in the bottom lefthand corner is the duplicate selected frames button. As the name indicates, this button will duplicate the selected frame(s).

4. The trash can is the delete selected frame(s) button. This button deletes the currenly selected frame(s).

5. The arrow button on the far left will skip to the first frame of the animation.

6. You'll also notice the the tiny arrow under each frame with the number by it. This is the length of time each frame will be displayed in the animation, in hundreths of seconds. The longer the delay, the longer the animation will take to cycle all the way through. Adjust as necessary.

That's all the buttons this tutorial will cover in the animation window. We didn't cover the tween button. This button will be covered in a future tutorial.

Part III- Cont'd.

Note: Determing the number of frames, compressing the image to a certain size, and keeping the animations smooth comes down to experience. There's no specific way to do it, just learn the animation window, look at the amount of movement from frame to frame, and delete any extraneous frames. Be patient, it takes time to learn, but it is possible with persistence and patience.

6. Go to Image-->Image Size, the following menu will appear:



7. In the Image Size box, uncheck constrain proportions, set the width and height, and click ok. This can take a bit, so relax for a minute or two:



8. After the image is resized, it's time to learn the optimization window. Along with deleting extraneous frames, the optimization window is the key to keep a good ratio of quality:compression. Make sure it's enabled. Go to Window-->Optimization to check it and make the optimization window visible.

The Optimization Window



The optimization window is the key to successful image compression. Learn it well. This section will outline the key features of the Optimization window.

Click on the Optimize tab in this window (The settings shown are a good place to start for compressing animations with a large number of frames). The transparency and interlaced box should be unchecked, these increase the size of the image. In addition to using the preset box, you can manually input the number of colors in the colors box. The fewer colors, the smaller the size of the image. However, the quality will suffer as more colors are removed. This will vary from image to image. Experiment a little to see what settings work best. Note: It's best to adjust these settings before clicking the optimize button above the image preview. That way you don't have to wait while ImageReady optimizes each setting when you adjust it, but rather will do them all at once.

The Preset box allows you to select a large number of preset settings for your animation. The number refers to the number of colors in the image. 256 is the default, don't go below 128 to preserve a colorful, quality image. Adjust as needed. Note: Dither refers to the amount of quality as the image is compressed. The higher the Dither, the better the image quality as it's compressed. However, the higher the dither, the larger the compressed image will be. The key is to mazimize the dither while keeping the image below the desired size. Set it to zero initially. Work up until the dither is maximized while still keeping below the image below the desired size.

The Reduction box under the Color Table will allow you to pick which method of color reduction is used for your image. The perceptual tab usually provides the best results for compression and still maintains an acceptable level of quality. The restrictive setting allows for maximum compression but greatly reduces the quality of the image. Use this mainly with images that have only a few colors, or clips with mainly dark colors. I don't use the adpative or selective settings often. Get a feel for how much each color reduction reduces the size of the image. Different settings work best for diffrent clips.

The lossy box allows you to set the amount of lossy. Lossy means that similarly colored pixels will be blended together. This will reduce the quality and size of the image. The higher the lossy, the more pixels will be blended. Lossy is very important for compressing images with large numbers of frames. You can type the number in the box or click on the camera icon next to the lossy box and use the slider to adjust lossy. I input the number maually.

Click the optimize button above the image preview when ready. Wait a minute while your image is optimized.

10. Once your image is optimized. Go to File-->Save Optimized as.



11. Pick a name, destination, make sure that gif is selected from the save as type box. Then click save.

12. Wait a minute while your image is saved.

Here's the final result:



That's it. A couple final notes:

1. ImageReady uses a ton of memory while compressing images, it's best to close all other programs while using it. I have a GB of RAM and it still taxes my system.

2. Sometimes ImageReady will lock up and give you an error message that there's not enough memory available to complete the selected operation. In these instances, it's best to use task manager to shut down and begin again. In XP, right click on the task bar and click task manger or hit alt+ctrl+del to bring up task manager.

3. ImageReady can take forever to close down, I simply use the task manager to close it using the above method.

4. For adding text, it's best to use PhotoShop or Windows Movie Maker, then to edit the image in ImageReady. I currently use Windows Movie Maker to add text. It's extremely simple to use, and it has a bunch of cool text effects. PhotoShop is the best way, if you have the know how.

5. You need the quicktime codec installed to import videos into ImageReady, get it here: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...lternative.htm

6. To save avi files as uncompressed (dv) avi files, you'll need the dv-avi codec. Get it here: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...c_DV_Codec.htm

__________________

An enormous amount of info and explained very well...very nice tut LS!

__________________
::XSGfX::
::My dA::

Thanks man, it's actually 75% new material, updated with parts of an older guide.

__________________

Nice, I just notice my tutorial on this, has broken image links , but indeed very handy!

__________________
Xbox 360 - 2 Games - 2 Controllers - 120GB Elite - Dead
PS3 - 23 BD Games - 13 PSN Games - 9 Controllers - 320GB - Alive
Wii - 6 Games - 4 Wiimotes - Alive
PC - Overkill - 3DMark06 [13896]- God like :]

Gaming Generations | XnogarD Production - Soon!!!