Any recommendations for a good program for making GIFs from video files? Something that's easy to use and gives you good quality GIFs.

Xilisoft,

gifsoup (youtube videos)

Gom Media player does it actually, thats a good one.

I like JASC Animation Shop.

Okay. I downloaded that. How do you make GIFs? I need step by step directions.

+1. It's pretty intuitive, and once you have the basics down it's a piece of cake.

I use a combination of tools to create .GIFs, but it all gets passed into JASC Animation Shop 3 to create the final result.

Same here.

What I used to do was cut the video up the way I wanted in TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress and then I would make the final touches in Ulead GIF Animator 5. But then my computer crashed and I was screwed. I lost everything.

Anyways, I downloaded that JASC Animation Shop 3 and I want to try it out. Can someone provide some step by step directions on making a GIF from a video file with that?

Personally, I use avidemux2 to save the frames I want. Then I use Adobe PS to automate levels, resizing, and cropping if necessary, and toss them into JASC. That's mostly for making avys, it is a process.
If they don't need to be cropped or touched up, you can just put them right into JASC, it can change the size for you.
First step...download avidemux, or whatever you want to use to get your frames.

I mainly use virtualdub to trim the video but if it won't open in that i get screen grabs from GOM player.
Then i put it through JASC Animation Shop 3 to make the GIF.

You can use JASC animation shop 3 to select the frames you want,
then crop them to exactly what you want to see, and re-size the
video to whatever size you want. About the only thing it can't do
is adjust color and brightness.

It doesn't do frame extraction from video though

You can extract any frame, or number of frames from an AVI video
in JASC Animation shop 3.

Huh...I remember trying it and it not working. Maybe no good on certain codecs.

Open the video in JASC, hold down the "ctrl" key on the keyboard.
left click on the frames you want to extract from the video,

then "right click" to open the editing menu, click on "cut"
then "right click" again to reopen the editing menu...go to
"paste" then over to "as new animation"

It will now open the frames you selected as a new animation that
you can crop and re-size as needed.

I've never been able to open up a full video in Animationshop.
I tried some just now and everyone came up with this message.

Same deal here...I ran through dozens different AVI's, and only one worked...it's an MS DX codec, pretty old...don't think anybody even uses it anymore

I have gotten that same message a few times, I would then
run the video in question through a converter "Super" to make
it into an AVI, even though it is probably an AVI, and that
would solve the problem, but there is often some loss of
quality when doing that.
So I would (if possible) find another
version of the video that wouldn't open, and download that
from Youtube, and that always solved the problem.

I put the video I want to use into AVS Video Editor, cut it down to just the part I want and produce it as an MPEG. Then I put that into JASC and edit it down to the frames I want and then crop. I wouldn't try to edit the whole video in Animation Shop.

If you like that method, then stay with it. For me, it's much
easier to open the video in JASC, then edit it down to the frames
I want, then crop, then re-size it.

I use Ulead Gif Animator 5. First I edit the parts I want out with either virtualdub or TMPGEnc. Then here is how I do it.

1. Open the video with Ulead.


2. I always just click ok.


3. Crop out black bars from the top and bottom (if you want)


4. Resize the gif to whatever you want. I usually do 240 height.


4.Go to frame properties and choose the speed you want. I usually do 6 or 7.


5. Save as Gif.


Finished product.



I also delete dupe frames, ghost frames, if its of a photoshoot I usually delete the frames when the flash of the camera happens but all that is not necessary I'm just a weirdo.