Animated screenshots - not modem friendly

[Task Force]

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

[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?

[Task Force]

Originally Posted by 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?

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

[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]

Originally Posted by 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

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.

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.

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

[Doolittle81]

Originally Posted by 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

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)

[Carotio]

Originally Posted by 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!

A small bell was suddenly ringing for my ears...
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.