Question?

[Lin Evans]

I have had several PTE users ask me about creating animated gif's for use in their PTE shows. Not the little cartoonish animated gifs commonly seen on the web, but realistic and believable animations.

I make many of my own using Photoshop and free video software by taking video clips of real subjects then separating these into a series of jpg images, importing these into Photoshop and removing background when desirable and replacing it with transparency then in Photoshop combining these into very realistic animations which don't add a great deal of overhead and work flawlessly in slideshows.

My question is whether there is sufficient interest for a couple tutorials. First, which software to use and how to use it to create a stream of jpgs then how to remove unwanted backgrounds and produce png transparencies and finally how to create animated gifs from these sequential png transparencies.

If there is sufficient interest, I will be happy to make video tutorials and also provide the Windows installation code for the freeware I use to extract the jpg images.

Please let me know.

TUTORIALS ARE FINISHED - Links on the last post. I'll put links in the Tutorials Section Tomorrow...

Links also posted in my PTE Made Easy Tutorials as numbers 48, 49 and 50 - link below:

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7901-pte-made-easy-tutorials-continuously-updated/

NOTE! Experimentation has shown me that better smoothness in the movement of the horse will be found by using only the first 20 of the 22 png files. When selecting a sequence from the video - remember that movement repeats in the animated gif so it's actually better to end the sequence one or two frames before the original motion is duplicated so that as the sequence repeats the first image completes the motion. If one actually reaches a frame where the motion is identical or nearly identical to the first frame, there will be a "stutter" because the first frame's time will be in effect doubled. So for those who have downloaded, take the first 20 of the twenty two and create your animate gif from them and you will have smoother results.

Best regards,

Lin

[MUR]

Hi Lin

I am very interested.

MUR

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Lin

I am very interested.

MUR

+1

Yachtsman1.

[Robert E Johnson]

Hi Lin

I am most definitely interested.

Thanks

Robert​

[Tonton Bruno]

Hi Lin.

+1

[cead]

Hello Lin,

I am also interested.

Regards,

Frans

[nelson]

Hello Lin,

Always interested in viewing your tutorials.

Many thanks,

Kieron

[Lin Evans]

Hi Guys,

Thanks! I'll get to work on the tutorials right away.

The first one will be concerning outputting jpg stills from video and should be ready in a day or so. The second one will be on using Photoshop to convert these jpgs to PNG transparencies and the third on how to use Photoshop to convert the transparencies to an animated gif.

Best regards,

Lin

[smithrg]

Hi Lin, I am also interested, Thanks, robertg.

[Lin Evans]

O.K. Here are the links and information...

http://www.lin-evans.org/avidemux/avidemux.zip (link to zipped archive of Avidemux version 2.5.6) about 16 meg

http://www.lin-evans.org/tutorial/Avidemuxtutorial.zip Tutorial on using Avidemux 2.5.6 to extract selected sequential jpg frames from a video (56 meg)

http://www.lin-evans.org/tutorial/creatingpngtransparency.zip How to use Photoshop to create PNG objects with transparency for use in creating animated gifs with Photoshop (about 78 meg)

http://www.lin-evans.org/tutorial/animatedgif.zip How to create animated gifs in Photoshop from PNG files with transparent backgrounds (about 90 meg)

The last file (animatedgif.zip) contains a text file in rtf format with important information. Please read. It also contains the tutorial as well as the 22 png files created as explained in the tutorials and a zipped PTE file demonstrating the end product.

The tutorials were made using Avidemux 2.5.6 and Photoshop CS5. There is information in the text file about how to use CS6 or Photoshop CC which differe slightly. There is also information about why the latest version of Avidemux isn't suitable for extracting a jpg sequence.

To install Avidemux download the zipped archive to a folder and extract all files. Then create a shortcut for the exe file and drag it onto the desktop.

Let me know if there are any questions.

Best regards,

Lin

[JudyKay]

Lin, you are amazing! (But your desktop is messy!)

[Tonton Bruno]

Hi Lin

For people who don't use 7-Zip or Win-RAR and don't want to use them because these softwares are not safe, could you please provide us standard zip files ?

http://www.zdnet.com/article/critical-winrar-vulnerability-places-500-million-users-at-risk/

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tonton,

The files are zipped with PKZip - the only zip program I have - I've been using PK zip since 1990. I don't think it could be any more standard than that....

Best regards,

Lin

[Lin Evans]

Hi Judy,

LOL - yes, indeed - a truly messy desktop!!!. I have far more software installed than Windows XP can display so to be able to quickly find programs I use daily I have a huge mess of desktop icons....

Best regards,

Lin

[Guest Yachtsman1]

When I saw what I had to do to follow Lin's method, I swallowed & went onto something else. Now I see some of the replies I thought there must be more than one way to skin this cat, so I did a quick search & found http://gifmaker.me/ I downloaded it & had a quick go with some random images. I know how to convert JPEGS to PNG images in Elements, but not how to extract stills from video clips. So after my trial with Gifmaker I may persevere

PS I just tried to upload my home made sample but the forums microscopic upload allowance wouldn't let me

Yachtsman1.

Just edited this from GIF to PNG

[nelson]

Thanks for doing all this work for us Lin, It is appreciated.

Kieron

[Lin Evans]

Thanks Kieron - Hopefully it will help some better understand how animated gifs can be incorporated in their shows..

Best regards,

Lin

[davegee]

Hi Tonton,

The files are zipped with PKZip - the only zip program I have - I've been using PK zip since 1990. I don't think it could be any more standard than that....

Best regards,

Lin

Lin,

Standard Windows Unzip/Extract handles this ZIP.

DG

[Lin Evans]

Hi Dave,

Yes - PK Zip can be unzipped by about any currently used zip software which is one reason I continue to use it. All my tutorials dating back over ten years are zipped with PKZip and I really see no good reason to try to recompress literally hundreds of files. There has never been a problem with any of them and my opinion is "don't fix it if it's not broken.."

Best regards,

Lin

[Tonton Bruno]

I'm confused !

I removed 7-Zip from my PC but the default software to open Zip files was still 7-Zip !

Now I corrected it and the Zip files are automaticaly opened by Windows Explorer.

Thank you for your tutorial !

Notice that under Photoshop CC, it is possible to directly extract the 22 frames from the video.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Tonton,

Glad you have the zip situation resolved! Yes, it's possible with several versions of Photoshop to extract frame selections but I didn't want to have to write separate tutorials for each so used the freeware Avidemux which is very straight-forward and easy to use for extracting frames.

Best regards,

Lin

[Ken Cox]

Tonton

some background on winzip in this thread

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?/topic/18612-winzip-as-a-folder-or-as-individual-files/?p=124025

ken

[denisb]

Hi Lin,

Thanks for your tutorials.

some time ago, I used Avidemux (2.5.4) to extract the first frame from a video. I want to put it before the video itself in a PTE project.

But I observed a difference between the picture extracted and the video.

When I used FFmpeg to extract the first frame it was correct.

Do you observe the same difference ?

I made a small example to show you the difference: four slides in PTE

2s picture from avidemux

2s video

2s picture from FFmpeg

2s video

Best regards,

Denis

TestAvidemux.zip

[Lin Evans]

Hi Denis,

I see that the extract from Avidemux 2.5.4 seems to have a little less contrast than the ones from FFmpeg but I haven't noticed that with the ones I extracted using Avidexmux 2.5.6 though I wasn't really comparing them that carefully because after extracting I bring all frames into Photoshop, create a Photoshop action and adjust levels, brightness, contrast, color and sharpness applying the same action to each frame. Could it be possible that a filter was set on in Avidemux which could account for the contrast difference?

If I get a chance I will try inserting the original video and extract a single frame and try to compare it. For the purpose of making an animated gif it probably doesn't matter if there is a slight difference since all extracted frames would be processed for optimum quality before creating the animated gif...

Best regards,

Lin