Please someone help me find a program to make animated GIFs !!!!!!!

[dvd_master]

I want to make some animated GIFS using a series of pictures I have (all will be at various lengths). There are 15 frames, which I have in both GIF and Bitmap format.

I download countless programs from download.com but one TWO of them worked. But the filesize for them was HUGE !

One was 2.4 MB, the other was over 24. I don't even want them to be ONE megabyte ! I've seen very high quality banners with lots of motion at a low filesize. Which program can do this for me ??

[gooki]

flash or animated jpg

[dvd_master]

Is that the name of a program, or what ?

I want it to be an animated GIF. Not flash or JPEG.

[SirElvis]

Try Animation Shop from JASC (http://www.jasc.com)(a trial version is available for download). It can be used to create and edit animated GIFs.

[killingspree]

it's part of paint shop pro (from version 6 upwards) ... the best grapics editing program in my opinion!

definitly worth trying it!!

steVe

[SirElvis]

Originally posted by killingspree
the best grapics editing program in my opinion!


Photoshop is MUCH better, but also much more expensive. :-)

[dvd_master]

People, please read the first post by me. I have many programs that can make animated GIFs, but I need one that does them at a lower filesize ! These ones are really huge ones that won't work.

If they let you choose the filesize, that's even better.

So people, don't post links to any animated GIF software, just ones that can make the low filesizes.

[SirElvis]

In Animation Shop you can enter the level of compression, when saving your GIF. Also, when your source files are very big(photos, ...) GIF can't compress them very good. JPEG or PNG is much better, but they don't support animation, AFAIK.

[mpucoder]

This is the program I've used for years, works great, files are small. Which also means I haven't updated in years, so I don't know if they over-engineered it yet.
http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html

[dvd_master]

You're kidding me, right ?

GIF Construction Set made a HUGE GIF file for my small clip. Around 25 MB, for half of the clip I need it to be !

[killingspree]

Originally posted by SirElvis

Photoshop is MUCH better, but also much more expensive. :-)

i agree... but have to add that it is way harder to use too!


steVe

[Tri]

Try Gif Movie Gear (http://www.gamani.com/). It is also supposed to optimise gifs.

[redcane]

Originally posted by dvd_master
You're kidding me, right ?

GIF Construction Set made a HUGE GIF file for my small clip. Around 25 MB, for half of the clip I need it to be !

I beleive most of these programs do their job well, but require some user intervention to reduce file size. Like you need to specify to only update one part (the moving part) of the frame... The smallest animated gifs are still hand optimized AFAIK, using low frame rates on part of the data, and only updating small sections...

[redcane]

Originally posted by SirElvis


Photoshop is MUCH better, but also much more expensive. :-)

Personall I liked paint shop pro a lot better when I was using it, not just because it's cheaper (I was using both for free).

[benedict]

Just a quick thought ... Try lowering the BPP (pits per pixel) of your input graphics. Chances are you are using 24 BPP as input. For most animated GIFs, you can probably get away with 8 BPP. That alone will cut your output by 2/3rds. Irfanview (http://www.irfanview,com) can do that quite easily for you and it's free.

Beyond that, you're probably left with the hand optimization suggested by redcane, but that is a quite tedious process, especially with the number of frames you are suggesting.

[Also note that if you use hand-optimization, save your input frames in case you later want to turn it into video. As far as I know, none of the animated-GIF/video converters work correctly with this form of GIF optimization.]

One more item: I know you said you weren't interested in the Flash animation route, but especially if your animations requires high quality, chances are that Flash animation will produce an appreciably-smaller file size. Just keep it in mind if all of the above can't get you to a file-size acceptable to you.

[SirDavidGuy]

Just a quick thought ... Try lowering the BPP (pits per pixel) of your input graphics. Chances are you are using 24 BPP as input. For most animated GIFs, you can probably get away with 8 BPP. That alone will cut your output by 2/3rds. Irfanview can do that quite easily for you and it's free.

Errr... No.

Gif makes a codebook of 256 colors which accurately represent the image given. An input of 256 colors would be mapped to the same input, while a 24 bit input could be mapped more appropriately.

[Joe999]

Originally posted by SirElvis
GIF can't compress them very good. JPEG or PNG is much better, but they don't support animation, AFAIK.

png dosn't, but there's an animated form called mng. It also supports animated transparent pngs with jpeg style compression applied to them(jng). It's more feature rich than gif, has always given me much smaller file sizes and is free of the patent issues. The bad part is that I believe apache still ships without the mng mime type configured by default.It'd take about five seconds to add to a configuration file, but getting whoever hosts the page to bother might be a pain. And the bigger issue is that internet explorer dosn't support viewing of them, though gecko based browsers like mozilla and netscape(6+) can, as well as konqueror. Given that the windows version of internet explorer dosn't even have proper png support yet, I'm not holding my breath on any IE except future mac versions supporting it any time soon.

[benedict]

@SirDavid: Of course, you are correct. My head was obviously in the original BMP file sizes. Duh?

But here's another question that occurred to me: If you went to 8 (or even 4) BPP on the original BMPs, could you then get any appreciable savings if you next encoded to Flash or AVI? [Something I've not tried yet, but may find useful if so.]

[SirDavidGuy]

But here's another question that occurred to me: If you went to 8 (or even 4) BPP on the original BMPs, could you then get any appreciable savings if you next encoded to Flash or AVI? [Something I've not tried yet, but may find useful if so.]

Flash: Maybe, what compression does it use?
AVI: Again, with which compressor? Limiting to 256 colors should help there (In MPEG-4), but I still don't think it will help that much.

[benedict]

The only thing I've heard about Flash internals is that it operates using vector-based graphics. If that is the case, it's compression (if any) would have to be mathematical and obviously quite different from any type of compression used with video.

[redcane]

any compression is mathematical!!

But yes, by using vector graphics, the graphics already take up little space, so compression is basically unneeded.

Since you can represent a circle any size in vector graphics in the same space, but in raster you need more and more storage for a larger circle....