Best Gif Animation Software

Although I found many programs were able to make a Animated Gif from video file. By far and away VirtualDub is the best free animator.

I also have used Super but the quality was not there. The output is very choppy and features are not available.

GIMP or the Gnu Image Manipulation Program is a fantastic program but for the life of me can't understand why the animations are all very slow (about 1/2 speed). I have changed frame rates and other tricks that I found on the web but cannot fix the problem. The program is not for novices as I spent a couple of days to figure out how to configure the program and get the add on to do animations, but it was worth the trial and find that it is a free alternative to Photoshop.

VirtualDub is so easy you can turn almost any vid file into a GIF animation in minutes.

1. Asssuming you have a standard vid clip, avi, mpg or even flv file (will explain why I brought this up in a future post) Just open VD and open file chosen file. Remember that you are doing a looping animation so it will only be 50 frames or so especially if you want to keep the size of it under 2Mbps which is a common upload limit for blogs and free upload sites.

2. You will get a canvas for the file and a scrubber on the bottom where you select the specific frames that you are animating. The best outcome is usually when the camera is still and the motion begins and stops as similar images. (It loops, duh).

3. Under the file/export menu choose Gif Animation and voila! you have just done it. Make sure it retains the .gif extension and you can view it in VD or just drag the file to a internet window. (It will not animate in programs like Paint or Picture viewer.