Animated screenshots - not modem friendly

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Syxx_Killer

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.

[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.

*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]

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

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 <--

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 <--
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]

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.

[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)

[aanker]

Originally Posted by Carotio

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]

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). We don't want a thread with 30 replies to have 30 x 500KB = 15MB of images to load

thanks
Neal

[Carotio]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

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). We don't want a thread with 30 replies to have 30 x 500KB = 15MB of images to load

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]

Originally Posted by Carotio

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