Jasc tutorial

First step is opening the file you wish to use by selecting File then Open.

Once you have selected a file and opened it you will be given the option of what part of the file you want to use

Big note here: DONT IMPORT ALL FRAMES. Sure your file might only be 20megs as an avi but when you decompile that into separate frames often you'll be using huge amounts of memory and will take a long time to extract not to mention editing that many frames at once can waste alot of time.

Select the second one "Frames" and using the slider choose a small area to use. For time saving purposes and because I don't have a ton of RAM only import ~500 frames at a time you'll almost never have an animation that size to begin with.

On the bottom you'll notice that you choose to take a sample of the file. In other words you'll be taking 1 frame from how ever many you select. I usually make it 3

1 out of every 3 of 500 frames = 166 frames

Why is this good? Think of it this way. You eye captures much more information than your brain can process at any one time. So it "takes a picture" every so often (dozens in a second) and blends them together. That's why you move your hand in front of your face really fast and you see a blur. You can make the files smaller without sacrificing much.

Once your open your frames something like this will appear..

Each image is a frame, below each from are two numbers

F is the frame number and D is the delay or the how you see the frame.

Chances are you're going to have some extra frames on either side of the action you're trying to get. Delete them first or select the frames you want and cut and paste them as a new animation and have only the action left.

Time to mess with display...

Usually you will have to fix the display time, the default D time depends on how much you sampled, but if you followed the instructions and want a simple fluid motion

Select all frames(CTRL+A) and change the D time to 9

Need an explanation? Well, most files display at 30frames per second which means each frame should have a display time of 1, but it doesn't AniShop always defaults it at 3. When you take out one of every 3 frames you have to compensate to have the animation display for the same amount of time it did originally so 3x3=9. Confusing eh?

You can see the animation at any time by selecting the View Animation button

Now that you have fewer frames it's time to resize.

The size you choose depends on what you want. Mine are relatively large because you can always make them smaller but you cant make them larger again without losing quality. Also remember that if you want to use your image on a message board to keep the size as small as possible. Big gifs = Huge file size.

Finally it's time to compress and save.

File>Save As and you get this menu

Choose how much you want to compress, keep in mind the more you compress the crappier it'll look but the smaller the file size. I usually go with Level 3. Then select Next until you're done. You now have a gif, give yourself a cookie.

Tired yet?