Comments

johnmeyer wrote on 1/20/2006, 2:36 PM
I didn't know it could do that either.
rmack350 wrote on 1/20/2006, 2:43 PM
Very Cool. Thanks for sharing it!

Rob Mack
busterkeaton wrote on 1/20/2006, 2:51 PM
The background was white or transparent?
winrockpost wrote on 1/20/2006, 2:55 PM
the one i just downloaded and tried was transparent

Very cool. Learn from this place all the time.
Grazie wrote on 1/20/2006, 2:59 PM
I got some Xmas GIF cartoonie animations of me typing at my PC - swings straight into V . .. G
beatnik wrote on 1/20/2006, 3:37 PM
I discovered this by accident! I needed a butterfly for a logo in
the video. I went to Microsoft clipart and found the perfect butterfly
but it was animated. I decided to place it on the timeline to see what
happnes...It's ALIVE! I took it a step further and decided to keyframe
it to fly onto the corporate logo and stop! I just downloaded an animated gif of a cartoon character walking and placed it on the
timeline with a beach background, a little tweaking and the little guy
takes a walk on the beach!

Fun...Fun...Fun!
Chienworks wrote on 1/20/2006, 7:06 PM
Sorry, i knew that 4 years ago. I just figured everyone knew it.

Now, if only Vegas could render to animated .gif .... *sigh*
Coursedesign wrote on 1/20/2006, 7:20 PM
But you can!

Render to an image sequence in Vegas, import each frame of this to a separate layer in Photoshop, switch to ImageReady (comes with Photoshop), step through the layers, making only one layer at a time visible, when all frames are done, Save As animated GIF.

B.Verlik wrote on 1/20/2006, 7:45 PM
I knew this too. I took it for granted, figuring, if I know, everybody must know.
Coursedesign wrote on 1/20/2006, 7:57 PM
Hmmm... Maybe this could be in the Vegas manual, together with the other 100 common task how-to's that are not in the current manual, plus the exciting Vegas standouts that few know about?
Chienworks wrote on 1/21/2006, 4:15 AM
Bjorn,

I'm not taking issue with you since what you suggest works. In fact, what i do now is render as an uncompressed Type 1 AVI file and use SonicFoundry's Viscosity program to transcode it to animated GIF. However, i still would like to see this function natively supported within Vegas. I think that would allow more flexible and powerful options as well as being a lot easier.
navydoc wrote on 1/21/2006, 4:24 AM
I'm not sure about earlier versions of PS, but in ver 7, you can open an .avi file directly with Image Ready. You can select a range of frames and even choose how many frames to render as a gif. Here's an example I made from a Disney dvd I own. I snipped a short clip from a Pluto cartoon, resized and rendered out as an .avi. Then I used Image Ready to convert to an animated gif . Here's Pluto when done.

Doc
lwx wrote on 1/21/2006, 4:26 AM
Not to take away from the suggestion for direct export from within Vegas... but those of you who have Mirage likely realize you can use it for this sort of file format translation, hmm? Just import as one type and export the layer again in a single step.

Of course you could easily create the original anim there too for this sort of thing (though a low colour space format like .gif would not be my first choice.)
TeetimeNC wrote on 1/21/2006, 6:25 AM
Also, the Jasc (now Corel) Animation Shop that comes with Paintshop Pro can import an AVI and output to GIF, MNG, AVI, FLC, ANI and FLI.

But I had never thought to try an animated GIF on the Vegas timeline - nice tip.

-jerry
Coursedesign wrote on 1/21/2006, 8:38 AM
Chien,

I guess I'm a little behind on using Photoshop for AVIs. It's easy to get stuck in old ways...

I just remembered feeling a bit better after reading a post from Scott Kelby (Photoshop guru extraordinaire) where he admitted that even he didn't know about a feature that somebody else had posted about.... :O)

I think it is very cool and potentially useful to be able to put up an existing animated GIF on the Vegas timeline.

It seems a little bit excessive to offer yet another rendering option for it though, when there are so many great tools outside Vegas to help with this for the few cases where this would be needed (or is this just my limited imagination again?).

I have to say I'm getting more and more intrigued by the possibilities of Mirage, although I haven't had time to dig into it yet.

Jeff_Smith wrote on 1/21/2006, 9:18 AM
I wish Vegas could make animated .gifs as well. It would be great to be able to make animated avatars from your own video footage since most forums now all support this as part of your profile, great for web site thumbs and Myspace folks would also use it alot.

For now I use Animation shop 3 which I find a bit clunky.

I sent this in as a product suggestion
dibbkd wrote on 1/21/2006, 1:46 PM
Hey - Great tip! I learn something new *almost* every day!

:)

This gives me more stuff to play with....