How to create animated gifs from movie files?
Convert avi to animated gif
This is a guide that I copied from my old wordpress.com blog. Basically, this guide will teach you on how to create animated gifs from movie files? Specifically, this will be a step-by-step guide on how to create animated gifs from avi files.
Ok Let’s Start…
::Tools Needed::
VirtualDubMod – This program will extract a piece of the video file that we want to convert to an animated gif.
GIF Movie Gear – This program will do the converting from avi to gif.
::What You Need To Do::
- Open vdm(virtualdubmod) and open the avi file with it. (Ctrl-O)
- Try to locate the part where you want the clip. This can be done by playing the movie on any video player and getting an approximation of the time.
—–Example:: My example will be Episode 14 of Love Story In Harvard. I want to make a gif of her pointing her thumbs in a cute way…
- Next, go to the time where the clip ends using virtual dub.
—–Example:: My clip ends at approximately 41minutes and 53seconds. It doesnt need to be exact but near to that. - Press CTRL-G and input the values in the box labeled Jump to frame at time. The format is , XX:YY:ZZZ , X = minutes, Y = Seconds, Z = Miliseconds.
—–Example:: I would be inputting 41:53:000, see figure.
Keep approximating the values till you get it right. - After doing that, Press the HOME key, the cue that it worked will be the little text that the bottom part of VDM.
—–Example:: See figure and the red part.
- Press CTRL-Right Arrow key and then Press END. You will notice in that some parts of the progress bar became blue…
- Press Delete…. and that blue part goes away…. We have now done 1/2 of the extraction of the video clip we want to make into an animated gif.
We have deleted the extra scenes after our clip, now let us delete the extra parts before ur clip. - Locate the start of your clip, and go to it… remember CTRL-G?
—–Example:: My input would be 41:49:000. - Now Press END, and the cue for doing this correctly will once again be shown in the lower right.
- Now notice the blue part again, well… just press DELETE… and we have now isolated our clip from the movie.
- Do you want to resize your clip? If NO, then move on to the next Bullet. If yes, continue reading….
—Go to Video then Filters
—Press Add then Find resize from the list.
—Double clicking on resize will show you this window… usually the values that I use are the ones that are in the pic. Click the Show Preview button for a preview… hehe
—When you are happy with the settings, OK it , and OK till you return to the main screen… - Now press F7 and save the file… Dont forget to set the VIDEO MODE option there to FULL PROCESSING MODE.
- I guess you now have a file named MYCLIP.AVI or something… well done, close virtualdubmod and let us open GIF Movie Gear
- Click on Open file and open the clip.. well.. MYCLIP.avi … after a few loading sequences, you will be shown with a screen like this…
- Now here, you can basically just go to FILE and save it as an ANIMATED GIF and you are done but I am sure that the file size will be very big. So let us make it smaller. …
- Take note of the values encircled in the pic…
None of 120 Frames :: The entire animation has 120 frames
160 * 120 :: resolution of the pic.. this is already nice and clear on cellphones.
3.60sec :: length of the animation
File size :: Size of the gif animation, 1.2mb is BIG! lol - Basically, we need to reduce the file size… the safest way is to reduce the number of frames… follow the pic…
then 
- Usually I just press ok, and do it again… so a total of 2 frame reductions… You can check the preview if it still looks ok or it gets choppy (CLOSE THE PREVIEW WINDOW FIRST THEN OPEN IT AGAIN AFTER A FRAME REDUCTION hehe).. when you are satisfied..Save it as an animated gif and DROOL at your gif.. nyahaha
This ends the guide… Enjoy making animated Gifs.
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very useful post. I was asking my partner about making animated GIF files a month ago and he did that in the early 90’s and has since stopped. This will probably help us out.
Cindy Kings last blog post..International Marketer Review Blog Carnival #11
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Thank you, I tried earlier of making an animated GIF of my own video but was not successful, lemme try this time.
Medical Transcription Blogs last blog post..Transcriptionists, how to improve typing speed and productivity?
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That’s very useful and interesting…Anyway, are the tools needed are freeware?
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@Cindy King – Thank you. I hope that this guide will help you out.
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@Medical Transcription Blog – I wish you luck in your trials. Just come back and tell me if you have problems.
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@Tania – Hello, only virtualdubmod is freeware. The other one is trialware.
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[...] How to make animated GIFs from AVI files? [...]
OMFG I took me so long to figure out the first part..VDM BUT I GOT IT AND IT WORK HURRAH i finally know to make gifs i was gonna use adobe but i found this tutorial instead im gonna have some fun
THANK UU
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I’m having trouble with this…virtualdubmod doesn’t seem to recognise most current avi files. Suggestions?
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Hey, I tried this but neither program like the AVIs I’m using. It say something about XVID or something. I’ve tried a bunch of different ones but no luck. D:
If you can help me, respond at my email, please: mochaloveshim@aol.com
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@Jon – Please update your codecs. I would suggest that you download the codec pack from cccp-project.net
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@Myumi – Do you have the codecs for XVID video? Please try to download the codec pack from cccp-project.net
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Thank you for this guide. However, VDM is driving me crazy. After I press END I see no progress. No part of the bar turned blue. I’ve tried about 10 times already. Please help!!!
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same problem as PT, can’t highlight and delete anything either side of the clip.
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@PT – Hi PT, please tell me more about your problem so that I can try it out myself too and see how I can help. Thanks.
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Thanks so much, I’ve been trying all sorts of different softwares but to no avail, this really helped me a lot, but is there anyway to get gif’s from rm(real media) files? Converting my rm files to avi is taking a lot of time. So pls let me know, if there’s a way.
Thanks again.
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Allen Gurrea (931 comments.) Reply:
December 29th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Hi there, I’m glad the guide was useful for you.
so far, I don’t know how to do it via real media files 
sorry
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How come all my GIFs become slow? =(
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Allen Gurrea (931 comments.) Reply:
February 9th, 2009 at 9:42 am
@David, perhaps you deleted a lot of frames?
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David Reply:
February 9th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
@Allen Gurrea, I haven’t deleted any frames actually. My preview looks fine but when I save the GIF it becomes slow.
Heres a link to my result: —~WAIT, WHAT THE?!
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/9084/laliluxb7.gif
When I watch it on that site it’s perfect, but when I have the GIF saved on my computer it becomes slow :S How weird!
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Allen Gurrea (931 comments.) Reply:
March 13th, 2009 at 8:22 am
@David, It really is. it is fast here on my browser.
THANK YOU I finally got it to work, and I really made a .gif! Awesome thanks! Now I just need to figure out how to get them into Livejournal icons…
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Allen Gurrea (931 comments.) Reply:
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:12 am
@Adamant, you are very welcome my friend.
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I want to do this but my problem is I don’t trust those codecs and most of my files are xvid
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Allen Gurrea (931 comments.) Reply:
March 13th, 2009 at 8:24 am
@David, hmmm which codecs do you mean? If you need codecs, I would recommend that you use and only use CCCP – combined codec community pack.
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Tried it with Gif movie gear but it’s ugly. It’s something with the colors. Yours look like it was but mine looks so different.
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Anyway I checked 24-bit color and everytime I save it it’s again 256 colors
Don’t know what is going wrong.
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Allen Gurrea (931 comments.) Reply:
March 13th, 2009 at 8:25 am
@David, hmm the source is different from the output? In virtualdubmod, it is still 256 colors?
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The problem with Gif Movie Gear for me is that it reduces the amount of colors to 256 already at the beginning, when the AVI is loaded. So, if I crop the animation in Gif Movie Gear, which possibly could exclude some colors, and I would optimize it to 256 colors afterwards, I could have better quality! Is Gif Movie Gear able to do this?
I used to do this a long time ago with ‘Animation Shop’, a program that came with ‘Paint Shop Pro’. It was quite the same, but it reduced the amount of colors to 256 (or less) in the end, which I think is better. I don’t know if Animation Shop still exists… I think when Corel took it over, they totally messed up the program and made it very bad!
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Thanks so much for the guide! It’s really easy to follow
Btw, is it possible to crop the video and take just a specific area inside the frame? I mean, for example, just take the top left corner square of the video.
Thanks again!
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