Howto: Create animated GIFs from movie files with free software in four easy steps

[SeijiSensei]

Yeah. I tried doing that but having as many as 250 jpeg files in the output directory to resize can be very cumbersome. Unless Gimp has a way of doing it batches that I'm not aware of.

I meant to resize the image in the GIMP after you've added all the layers. Once you've added the layers, GIMP treats the image as a single entity for tasks like resizing and cropping.

You can also write a little bash script to resize all the images in a directory. Something like this:

#!/bin/sh
# script to resize images in a directory
IMAGEDIR=/path/to/image/directory
NEWDIR=resized
SCALE='50%'

cd $IMAGEDIR
mkdir -p $NEWDIR

for f in *.jpg
do
    convert $f -resize $SCALE $f $NEWDIR/$f
done

This uses the convert command from the ImageMagick package. Run "sudo apt-get install imagemagick" to make sure you have it installed.

Replace IMAGEDIR and NEWDIR which your own choices. The scale factor can be a percent, a numerical value like 200 which changes the width to that size in pixels and adjusts the height proportionately, or any of a number of other options shown here. The rescaled images will be placed in IMAGEDIR/NEWDIR, and the originals preserved.

[EdTheUniqueGeek]

Awesome. Perfect.
Thanks again.

[EdTheUniqueGeek]

Ok. So I have created an animated gif. It runs fine locally on my computer if I launch it with Firefox and Chrome. However, if I post it anywhere like Google+ or Tumblr, it doesn't work.
See:
http://edtheuniquegeek.tumblr.com/po...imated-gif-and

And I know for a fact both services will display an animated gif.
Anyone have an idea why it doesn't work?

[SeijiSensei]

Ok. So I have created an animated gif. It runs fine locally on my computer if I launch it with Firefox and Chrome. However, if I post it anywhere like Google+ or Tumblr, it doesn't work.
See:
http://edtheuniquegeek.tumblr.com/po...imated-gif-and

And I know for a fact both services will display an animated gif.
Anyone have an idea why it doesn't work?

The one on Tumblr was converted to a jpeg.

[EdTheUniqueGeek]

The one on Tumblr was converted to a jpeg.

Hmmmm....well that sucks.

[EdTheUniqueGeek]

Fixed it.

http://edtheuniquegeek.tumblr.com/po...0/trying-again

The tip is, if using Tumblr, you need to post as a Text post instead of a Photo post.
More info here:
http://tumblring.net/tumblr-animated...nd-displaying/

[EdTheUniqueGeek]

So I have made a few animated gifs and posted on my site at edwardcrosby dot com. However, I am noticing that my output doesn't seem to have high quality like the source.
Example: I am currently trying to output a clip from In the Mouth of Madness with the same command as given in the original steps of this thread like so:

mplayer -ao null -ss 0:02:55 -endpos 10 MouthOMadness.m4v -vo jpeg:outdir=moviedirector

Here is the process of that command:

MPlayer 1.0rc4-4.4.5 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing MouthOMadness.m4v.
libavformat file format detected.
[lavf] stream 0: video (h264), -vid 0
[lavf] stream 1: audio (aac), -aid 0, -alang eng
VIDEO:  [H264]  716x368  24bpp  90000.000 fps  428.7 kbps (52.3 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
 major_brand: mp42
 minor_version: 0
 compatible_brands: mp42isomavc1
 encoder: HandBrake 0.9.5 2011010300
jpeg: Progressive JPEG disabled.
jpeg: Baseline JPEG enabled.
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [faad] AAC (MPEG2/4 Advanced Audio Coding)
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 160.0 kbit/10.42% (ratio: 19997->192000)
Selected audio codec: [faad] afm: faad (FAAD AAC (MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio))
==========================================================================
AO: [null] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
Movie-Aspect is 2.73:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
[swscaler @ 0x7f4072519620]using unscaled yuv420p -> rgb24 special converter
VO: [jpeg] 716x368 => 1006x368 RGB 24-bit 
jpeg: moviedirector - Output directory successfully created.
A: 185.0 V: 185.0 A-V: -0.000 ct: -0.052   0/  0  8% 29%  0.8% 0 0 

Exiting... (End of file)

Between that and the steps used in Gimp as outlined in the steps the animated gif comes out looking no so clear. Here is the image from In the Mouth of Madness.

http://www.edwardcrosby.com/animated/ItMoM.gif




Is there a way to keep the quality of the source video without any degradation as seen in my final animated gif?