Image Ready and Gif Animations

[bomadian]

Is image ready the best solution for animating gifs on the mac ? I want to be able to get the smallest file size for the most amount of frames (arent we all?!). I haven't used much of imageready cos it looks daunting even though i'm quite comfortable with photoshop's layers - is it worth getting in to or are there very good shareware options out there for macs ?

 

[GodBless]

Is image ready the best solution for animating gifs on the mac ? I want to be able to get the smallest file size for the most amount of frames (arent we all?!). I haven't used much of imageready cos it looks daunting even though i'm quite comfortable with photoshop's layers - is it worth getting in to or are there very good shareware options out there for macs ?

Although I don't regularly create animated .gif files, the best thing I've used is ImageReady so I do recommend it although others (who know about more types of .gif software) might be able to give you better recommendations for your specific need.

 

[ezzie]

i would definitely recommend ImageReady. it seems very difficult to use at first, but the fact that you understand you'll be working in layers means you're off to a good start!

 

[Mydriasis]

Yeah if you have ImageReady stick with it and you'll do fine.

Besides its the same thing in PS, just open the Animations window. Use ImageReady when you creats stuff for the web with slices, for Animations only PS work great.

 

[bomadian]

Cue the experts....

thanks guys, I stuck with image ready and it's cool, its just hard to find any free tutorials on it. can anyone who has mastered image ready help me with something ?

I've taken a 3 minute video from Final Cut Express and exported it to an image sequence, imported those images into Image Ready to make a gif animation. I've managed to get the file size down to 3.5 mb but can't get any smaller without it looking really bad. The goal for me is 1.2mb which is the file size limit for myspace now - can someone take a look at my file and tweak it lovingly or tell me what i'm doing wrong.

 

[Yvan256]

I've taken a 3 minute video from Final Cut Express and exported it to an image sequence, imported those images into Image Ready to make a gif animation. I've managed to get the file size down to 3.5 mb but can't get any smaller without it looking really bad.

GIF wasn't designed to make minutes-long video clips. The compression is also non-lossy (I'm not talking about color reduction). As your own tests indicate, you won't be able to go much lower than 3.5MB.

If anything, you should be trying to put your video in Flash Video Movie format (plays in Flash directly in the browser). The quality will be a lot better and you'll have the ability to keep your audio, if any.

You could also put a link directly to your .mp4 file (MPEG-4/AAC) for people on operating systems with no Flash player (some Linux distros, etc). Or even in the old MPEG-1 format (with Layer II audio) so that people on older systems can play it too.

 

[bomadian]

If anything, you should be trying to put your video in Flash Video Movie format (plays in Flash directly in the browser). The quality will be a lot better and you'll have the ability to keep your audio, if any.

Thanks, the advice makes sense although I have one problem, myspace only takes gifs or jpegs for profile pictures so flash isn't an option for me. you seem like an expert though, can you tell me if there is a way to play 3 or 4 frames that reside in the middle of my animation over and over for a set amount of time, so i can chuck out alot of the frames ? i have 30 seconds of it raining at the moment and i thought you could get the same effect of rain with just 3 frames.

 

[Yvan256]

Can you tell me if there is a way to play 3 or 4 frames that reside in the middle of my animation over and over for a set amount of time, so i can chuck out alot of the frames ? i have 30 seconds of it raining at the moment and i thought you could get the same effect of rain with just 3 frames.

Each frame can be set for a specific length. However, you cannot loop a set of frames inside the whole set of frames. Say, frames 1-200, then frames 201-210 in loop 25 times, then frames 211 to 300. The format doesn't support it.

The only thing you can do is try and choose a shoter part of your movie to make your animated GIF from. Also, keep in mind that people will have to download a huge file just so they can see this movie. If it's on a specific page made for the movie, then it should be ok. If it's for something else like, say, an avatar, then you'll only be wasting bandwidth.

I'm still recommending my first idea of a Flash movie player. Simply host the video file somewhere else and reference it in your page on Myspace. Unless Myspace also prevents that, I have no knowledge of how they work, if they filter out code, etc.