How to make Animated GIFS
I get a lot of emails asking how to make gifs like the ones on this site. This tutorial will show you how I do it. I'm sure there are several different ways to make them, as well as better programs, but this is what I use. You will need between 2/3 different programs to make the animation. It depends on how you want to do it. If you find this tutorial helpful, tell someone about it. If not keep it moving....lol.
First off you need to decide what type of video you want to use to make the animation. Do you want one from a video you have on your camera phone? Is there a certain scene from a music video or movie that you want?
Let's say that their is a nice video on Youtube that you like, and you want to make a gif from it. You would need a program to download the video. I use Youtube Downloader the program is free and very simple to use.
You would find the video that you want to download, enter the url into the Link box, then press Start. It's that simple.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next what I do after it downloads, I use Window's Movie Maker (this should already be on your computer... unless you have a Mac)I load the video clip by going to Tasks - Import Video. Then I go through the clips to see which scene that I want to use.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Once I find the scenes that I want I drag and drop it onto the storyboard.
After that I go to File - Save Movie file. You always want to make sure that you save the file in the DV-AVI format.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now some people make their gifs using ImageReady which comes with Adobe Photoshop. I don't...lol. I could probably save time if I did it that way, or maybe not. You know how once you start doing something a certain way, you can't help but continue to do it the same way. I am not a professional....but hey it works for me.
So next I use a program called Video to GIF/JPEG Converter
This is the reason why I use the Windows Movie Maker to chop up the scenes, because with this program you can't open video files that are any longer then 60 seconds. It will say the "pins are not connected" or something like that.
Anyway, I open the video, set a start and ending point, then capture frames. At that time I can change the size of the gif, delete frames if I want to, or crop it.
Now if you're lazy, you can save and finish off your animation just like that, and be done with it.
But what I do next is I use Ulead GIF Animator 5 to edit the frames. You can add text to it, change how fast the frames go, or just tighten it up however you want.
After that you just make sure to save it as a gif file....and voila you are done.
Now like I said...I am NOT a pro...I learned all these things with the help of Google..and some trial and error. If this tutorial was too complicated, or didn't answer enough questions for you...I do apologize. And maybe you should do your own search and find another one...lol
For those that it did help...you are most welcome.
--Sunshyne
|
|
