Animated Gif

Banzai Pipeline

What a RUSH

Sun was showing thru the lightly overcast sky and the pipe was PUMPINNNnnn!!!!!
Nope - not me surfing. Size of the wave? This man is about 5'8".

Barreled

The Video to GIF process is simple with the right tools.

  • You will need a video camera to get your original clip. Hi8 is good, Super VHS will work as well. Good results happen even when standard formats as 8MM and standard VHS is used . (Sorry, we do not service the BETA format at the moment.
  • A video deck to play back your video tape with a good edit controller helps a lot.
  • A speedy computer that has a fast CPU loaded with lots of RAM and a fast video card and hard disk is basic.
  • The system also needs a decent video capture card to change the analog (video signal) to a digital signal and file (computer data).
  • A good software program to manage the file is needed where color correction and other enhancements may need to be done while the file is being captured. Some pre-editing done by this software saves a lot of post edit work on each individual frame of your file. For example: The video for the GIF file on this page was shot on an lightly overcast day so light was even but, the sea was a green color. The blue is by software enhancing the image colors prior to being digitally captured.
  • To select the individual clip from the video tape takes me a bit of the time. The sequence to be captured should be contigious, short, and meet other tests.
  • This sequence is digitally captured initially in the AVI format at about 15 frames per second. This sequence totaled about 20 seconds of video so 15 FPS times 20 seconds is a lot of individual frames to work with. This AVI file is probably the third take of the same clip where color correction is pretty much a trial and review process.
  • The individual frames of the AVI file is then translated to the GIF format where the color limits of the GIF format come into play. A 256 color pallet means you don't have all the colors you started with but, most of the important colors are used so, almost the same. The art is still effective though some detail is lost.
  • Individual frames are then reviewed and edited out. Where I initially had say 20*15=300 frames I delete what I feel are the unnecessary pictures by first croping the beginning and end points. Then the individual frames are worked, reviewing them in sequence to reduce the size of the file to what I feel are just the necessary images as:
      frames #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 are being reviewed and I delete say, #1 and #3 because I did not feel that they were significant enough to keep. The next group of frames #2, #4, #5 #6 and #7 are then worked. and so on and so on. The more frames in the file, the larger the file so, the longer it takes to load and play. On a slow computer, the image may seem to stall where change is not very significant. This edit task is significant where each frame is compared to at least the two frames before and after it. Please compare the two cheerleader files below. These are two child clips off the same master (parent) file. The left clip was "frame edited" again to get a smaller file.
  • Selecting individual frames for the net file is easy enough, just get significant change but not too much or it will be choppy. The thing about deleting frames is that, sometimes I use several frames consecutively then have to delete three or four in a row, then every other two, keeping one here and there. I have not seen a pattern that I can automate. Where I had 300 frames, I try to net down to about 45-60 frames.

  • The master file can then worked to get the short cuts or clips you see on these pages. The master is available and playable but takes long to download from the web. There is a link to the Banzai Master after the next page. There is also the thumbnail size master used to produce the clips below.
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    We provide a service to help you convert your video clips to animated gifs. Your own custom graphic. Copyright? No worries, (if you own the rights your video, it is your graphic.)

    Print this worksheet to define your graphic
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    Contact salt@spiced.com if you have a question or have a custom job regarding works of this type.
    Thank you.

    This link will take you to files you can use on your site.
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