Animated screenshots - not modem friendly

[Carotio]

Is this a screenshot thread? Well... yes and no
Is it a video thread? Well, yes and no

It depends on how you look upon it, and since no one else seems to have made one of these threads, I'm gonna do it now.

This is a place where you can post your animated gif files made by several screenshots in a row to illustrate your gaming experience in SH4.
Play the game, find a good angle, remove the dials (best, but not required), then hold down CTRL and click away on F11 as the game and your desired animated scene takes place. You'll now have a series of bmp's in your folder. These obviously have to be converted to gif files and then put in a row in a program. Personally, I use Jasc Animation Shop. I don't know if there's a free program available, so if anyone knows, please share your knowledge.

Please post them within sizelimit 800*600. <-- This may however change, so follow and take part of the discussion in the thread.

Okay, here's the first example:
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/Carotio/AniGif/SH4_PacificBattle5_small.gif

My first example changed from 800*600 to 400*300, a reduction in file size to app. 1/3

[SteamWake]

No animation here, single frame only...

Might be my firewall, (at work) have others verify.


edit; These work for me at home !

[Task Force]

Veary good, shows up fine for me.:D

[Gunfighter]

Never tried this but it looks interesting might give it a go Thanks for info
:up: :yep:
did you check with Admin to see if it was OK as there is a Video thread somewhere.

[Nisgeis]

did you check with Admin to see if it was OK as there is a Video thread somewhere.

That's more for posting links to videos and if it got all bloaty, people wouldn't be able to see the nice videos - one of mine is in there :D . That's the reason I joined subsim in fact. It's all Tex Films' fault.

Nice idea for a thread Carotio.

[Carotio]

I have 4 animated screenshots from this small Pacific Battle. However, I can for now only show 3 of them in full size. The 4th is sized 25.9mb:o :o :o So I can show you three in full size and one small version of 400*300.

Notice that you can see the moon and the sun very close to each other in these shots. It's the first time, I think that I have seen this. Has anyone seen a solar eclipse in the game? Just curious...

EDIT:
I have in order to reduce loading time reduced the dimensions, so that all 4 have 400*300. The original 800*600 is in the dl link.

Second liner 1st shot
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/Carotio/AniGif/SH4_PacificBattle1_small.gif


Second liner 2nd shot, final blow
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/Carotio/AniGif/SH4_PacificBattle2_small.gif


First liner 2nd shot, a dud
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/Carotio/AniGif/SH4_PacificBattle3_small.gif


First liner 3rd shot, final blow
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/Carotio/AniGif/SH4_PacificBattle4_small2.gif

All four shots in full size:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?vtzdneyqndm

[Carotio]

Damn :arrgh!:

I have quite a strong pc and fair internet connection. Now that I just posted 4 more screenshots, the page loads quite slow.

Hmmm....

Maybe the size limit should just be set to 400*300 then!???
Now that I look at the 4th image in 400*300, I actually think it's detailed enough.

What do you think?

[Syxx_Killer]

Interesting idea, Carotio. Those are some nice shots. However, I don't think you have to continually press Ctrl + F11. I tried it once in SH3, but haven't tried it in SH4. In SH3 you can press something like Ctrl + F12 and the game will continually take screenshots until you press that key combo again. I don't remember the exact combo, though. I think it was F12, but it may be one of the other F buttons.

[Task Force]

Veary good, even with all these animated pics everything loads fast.:up:

[Orion2012]

Interesting. Loads fine for me by the way.

[Rockin Robbins]

Everything looks great here on this shared connection in the slow old USA. I've GOT to find a free program to do that!

Our game plots the moon in the wrong position and with the wrong phase. Amazingly, your shot shows the moon in a nearly plausible phase for its position, a first in my experience! Actually the crescent would be even thinner there, but who are we to quibble with something coincidentally nearly correct?:rotfl:

If the game ever attempts to show a lunar eclipse, how much you want to bet it shows the moon behind the sun?http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/smileys/lotsa_greenguys.gif

[Task Force]

Everything looks great here on this shared connection in the slow old USA. I've GOT to find a free program to do that!

Our game plots the moon in the wrong position and with the wrong phase. Amazingly, your shot shows the moon in a nearly plausible phase for its position, a first in my experience! Actually the crescent would be even thinner there, but who are we to quibble with something coincidentally nearly correct?:rotfl:

If the game ever attempts to show a lunar eclipse, how much you want to bet it shows the moon behind the sun?http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/smileys/lotsa_greenguys.gif

Il bet my old processor.:rotfl:

[AVGWarhawk]

Looks good to me. How is this better or more helpful than just a video? Also, Neal has to check on bandwidth I believe.

Cool non-the- less:up:

[Gunfighter]

13/11/08 Removed
just testing it out
EDIT: Well it works I hope this thread will be allowed but as Nisgeis said Its Own Thread.Will remove if anyone not happy with it

[Carotio]

Looks good to me. How is this better or more helpful than just a video? Also, Neal has to check on bandwidth I believe.

Cool non-the- less:up:

About genre, well, I truely think animated gifs are a category in itself. Something like inbetween screenshot and video.

About bandwith, yes, you have a point there, which is why, I encourage a discussion of how large the dimensions may be? 800*600 or half = 400*300
I see on the kb sizes when shrinking the dimensions to half, then the kb size of the gifs go down to about 1/3. :D

If we settle for 400*300, no problem with me. We can always add a dl link for the large version in each of our posts. :yep:

But, I'm grateful to see the positive feedback of this thread, and I hope Neal accepts it, whether in big or small version. :up:

[Sailor Steve]

In SH3 you can press something like Ctrl + F12 and the game will continually take screenshots until you press that key combo again.
Shift + F11. If your computer isn't up to snuff it will seem like it locked up. I've done it by accident more than once.:damn:

[Task Force]

:rotfl: Press Shift F11 and your pic file will have a short slide show of your journey. (that is untill you stop the game)

[Arclight]

I've been making animations occasionally, and now they finally serve a purpose. Nice. :up:
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj2/EZatHome/GoingDown.gif
*on the size; I just stuck with the maximum width for the signatures (400), so I figure 400x300 would be a good size to stick to. Might become an issue for lower bandwith connections otherwise IMO.

[Nisgeis]

Hmmm, it's suddenly treacle time... How big are those gifs? The resolution is not as important as the number of frames!

[Carotio]

Hmmm, it's suddenly treacle time... How big are those gifs? The resolution is not as important as the number of frames!

You're right, the number of frames does make a huge difference to file size.
Stats for my 5 posted gifs:
SH4_PacificBattle5 - 43 frames - 5704kb - 800*600
SH4_PacificBattle1 - 41 frames - 6507kb - 800*600
SH4_PacificBattle2 - 42 frames - 7549kb - 800*600
SH4_PacificBattle3 - 65 frames - 10012kb - 800*600
SH4_PacificBattle4_small - 164 frames - 7063kb - 400*300 <-- :o

Stats for the unposted versions:
SH4_PacificBattle1_small - 41 frames - 2283kb - 400*300
SH4_PacificBattle2_small - 42 frames - 2081kb - 400*300
SH4_PacificBattle3_small - 65 frames - 2729kb - 400*300
SH4_PacificBattle4 - 164 frames - 26598kb - 800*600 <-- :o
SH4_PacificBattle5_small - 43 frames - 1399kb - 400*300

Photobucket can hold gifs up to about 10mb, but if you just have a regular free account as most people do, it will quickly be filled up.

So I wouldn't mind changing it to 400*300, in fact I think, I'm gonna do it right away.

But otherwise, keep yours coming, but make sure the size can be changed by later decision. Otherwise, I can do it for you.

[Arclight]

25 400x300 frames for mine, 1.78Mb (~1822Kb).

*could try reducing the color-depth to reduce size. Even 256 colors with an optimized or web-optimized palette and dithering looks good.

[Carotio]

Everything looks great here on this shared connection in the slow old USA. I've GOT to find a free program to do that!

A small bell was suddenly ringing for my ears... :huh:
I seem to recall you once mentioned yourself as a proud dad of a skilled daughter who did your animated signature for you.
So how did she do it? Maybe you can use her pc or get the program from her? (Hint ;) )

[Rockin Robbins]

Yup, she uses Dreamweaver--says it is the greatest. I just enjoy the challenge of doing something for free. I'll BET I can do it with my Ubuntu installation. If it could play Silent Hunter I'd run Windows about once a week.

[Doolittle81]

Looks good to me. How is this better or more helpful than just a video? Also, Neal has to check on bandwidth I believe.

Cool non-the- less:up:

The only advantage of animated gifs is that you can show them in posts on forums configured as this one is. You can also insert them into EMails, etc. Any place which handles Images (JPG, GIF, etc) will show your "movie".

Disadvantage is files sizes are large to huge for not much return. I'm surprised that this forum's administrators/mods will allow extensive numbers of Anim gifs to be posted.

As for the process,it is much simpler to use FRAPS (free version is more than adequate for this purpose) to capture a sequence, giving you a *.AVI movie clip file. Just open that AVI file in an animation application such as PaintShopPro's JASC Animation Shop. (Do not open all frames...cull the frames (every 2nd frame, every 4th frame, etc....experiment) (You may want to run the AVI file thru VirtualDub first, reducing the size there down to 400 pixel width, and also culling out every other frame, cropping off the Fraps Logo, then exporting as a new AVI file)

In the Animation Application, reduce size if you've not already done so in VDub. Cull the frames again, significantly...you don't need all the frames you'll first get in the original AVI movie, nor the number in the VDub movie file. For example, in the Animated GIF below, I reduced the frames from 747 in the original FRAPS AVI file to 47 in the GIF. Of course, that amount of reduction also increased the speed of action and reduced theh duration of the 'movie'-clip.

Generally, as you reduce the number of frames, you increase the "Delay time" for each frame remaining...to maintain smooth flow/action.

Then Save your movie as a GIF file. The 127 color option will usually work fine. Less than that and you'll get significant color distortion. (The action below was in Fog)

http://i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq121/Doolittle81/DemoDiveLongUnComp-1.gif

[aanker]

Personally, I use Jasc Animation Shop. I don't know if there's a free program available, so if anyone knows, please share your knowledge.
Very cool idea Carotio! The Gimp ( http://www.gimp.org/ ) does animated GIF's and is free.

Art

PS:
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Using_GAP/
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Advanced_Animations/

[Gunfighter]

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f163/ABThing/SmallAni.gif
New size 400 x 250 pixels Program used Serif Photo+2 only 11 frames.

[Onkel Neal]

Hi guys,

if you want to make a thread with big animated files, by all means, go ahead. Please post the "Large files" disclaimer in the title (or something to that effect).

However, for signature images that will appear on every post, please limit the size to ~100KB (see the forum FAQ (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/faq.php?faq=vb_user_maintain#faq_vb_sig_explain)). We don't want a thread with 30 replies to have 30 x 500KB = 15MB of images to load :huh:

thanks
Neal

[Carotio]

Hi guys,

if you want to make a thread with big animated files, by all means, go ahead. Please post the "Large files" disclaimer in the title (or something to that effect).

However, for signature images that will appear on every post, please limit the size to ~100KB (see the forum FAQ (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/faq.php?faq=vb_user_maintain#faq_vb_sig_explain)). We don't want a thread with 30 replies to have 30 x 500KB = 15MB of images to load :huh:

thanks
Neal

I thought, "not modem friendly" was advice/warning enough, but I'm unaware of an official subsim title warning regarding this. I mean something like when releasing a mod, one writes [REL] or REL:

Plus PM

[AVGWarhawk]

What you wrote was fine Carotio. If you wanted to start a new thread just have the disclaimer in the title. Like 56k beware pic heavy. Something like that.

[Onkel Neal]

Hi guys,

if you want to make a thread with big animated files, by all means, go ahead. Please post the "Large files" disclaimer in the title (or something to that effect).

However, for signature images that will appear on every post, please limit the size to ~100KB (see the forum FAQ (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/faq.php?faq=vb_user_maintain#faq_vb_sig_explain)). We don't want a thread with 30 replies to have 30 x 500KB = 15MB of images to load :huh:

thanks
Neal

I thought, "not modem friendly" was advice/warning enough, but I'm unaware of an official subsim title warning regarding this. I mean something like when releasing a mod, one writes [REL] or REL:

Plus PM

Aww, don't take this as a "warning". You titled this thead fine, I was speaking in general.

thanks
Neal

[Carotio]

"not modem friendly" was advice/warning enough
Aww, don't take this as a "warning". You titled this thead fine, I was speaking in general.

:lol:
Word puzzle, I know, but by warning, I didn't mean a warning from you to me about the title, but a warning to those people entering the thread to look/read at the large image files. ;)

Okay, nevermind, back to topic, now that we have Neal's approval, let's see YOUR animated images!!! :up:

[peabody]

In SH3 you can press something like Ctrl + F12 and the game will continually take screenshots until you press that key combo again. Shift + F11. If your computer isn't up to snuff it will seem like it locked up. I've done it by accident more than once.:damn:

I hit shift+F11 by accident and it seemed like the computer locked up, but what actually happened is a window opened on the desktop asking if I wanted to "Capture a sequence" and until you Alt+Tab to the desktop to answer the question, the game stopped.

Peabody

[Gunfighter]

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f163/ABThing/Light.gif
Ok ! Don't ask me what it says something about off:rotfl:
Only 2 frames this one off / on Get it

[Nisgeis]

This has given me a great idea. Well, I think it's a great idea anyway.

[Sailor Steve]

:lol:
Word puzzle, I know, but by warning, I didn't mean a warning from you to me about the title, but a warning to those people entering the thread to look/read at the large image files. ;)
"I know you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure what you heard is what I really meant."
-slogan from the -60s

Okay, nevermind, back to topic, now that we have Neal's approval, let's see YOUR animated images!!! :up:
Oh no, you started it. Now I can go crazy and it's ALL YOUR FAULT!
:rotfl:

And I'm not in a position to do animated images, so there!

[Gunfighter]

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f163/ABThing/SHWaveAni.gif

[tomoose]

I posted this a while back but thought it worth mentioning here again. My PC isn't the best for "filming" SHIV during a mission, however, I found that using the "replay" function in SHIV and THEN filming that (i.e. using FRAPS) I got a half-decent end product.

To clarify;
Using FRAPS while playing a normal mission caused horrendous framerates but using FRAPS during the game's REPLAY function much, much less framerate hit.

Hope this helps anyone else with a half-decent but not quite top-o-the-line PC!!!
:know:

[Wilcke]

Very entertaining Carotio.

Nice work Gunfighter as always!

[Carotio]

Long time no creativity... :hmm:

Anyway, posting an ani gif (not mine) just to wish y'all a merry Christmas time

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y288/Carotio/happyH.gif

[Arclight]

Forgot about this thread... :oops:
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj2/EZatHome/transit.gif

[Arclight]

http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj2/EZatHome/scope.gif

[Gunfighter]

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f163/ABThing/FlashingLights.gif
@Arclight I hope more people give it a try I think its a great thread,Only 3 frames This one

[Arclight]

I agree, it has potential. If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine the worth of a moving picture. :D
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj2/EZatHome/burning.gif

[Gunfighter]

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f163/ABThing/periscope2.gif
had to reduce colours on this one to reduce file size 8 frames

[Arclight]

If my periscope was acting like that, I'd steer clear. :haha:
"No thanks, I'll use the other one..." :yep:

Think this was my first atempt at animated stuff. Forgot all about it. :oops:
http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj2/EZatHome/SH4MyGIF.gif

[Max2147]

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f163/ABThing/FlashingLights.gif
@Arclight I hope more people give it a try I think its a great thread,Only 3 frames This one
That reminds me of this classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK90Ys2LhSo

[Gunfighter]

@Max2147 Thanks for that can you imagine the Electric Bill ?????????????????:wah: