Is there an Animated GIF frame limitation

spurrymoses · Post by **spurrymoses** » Sun May 07, 2006 12:01 pm

Hi,

I've tried a couple of times to insert animated GIFS, with great success. It's a great feature as I can get some basic animation going without having to use fancy software.

However, some gifs that I'd like to use only have 2-frames of animation. I'm not sure whether this fact is the problem, but when I pop it into the timeline in MSP8, it doesn't animate. It also allows me to trim it to any size - unlike other animated gifs where it will only stretch to the length of one duration of the animation sequence.

So, I imagine there is a frame-minimum or something. Is it a known number? If I know the number, I can search only for gifs with a minimum number of frames and save myself the wait of finding out whether it will work

Here's a dragonfly animated gif, I was wanting to use, for example. This doesn't animate at all when you drag it into MSP8 - unless i'm doing something stupid - which often happens.

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a365/ ... fly_pf.gif

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Sun May 07, 2006 3:05 pm

I downloaded your dragonfly and inserted it as a movie into the timeline. It showed both frames but could not be expanded. However, Ctrl-C and multiple Ctrl-Vs duplicated it without difficulty to simulate the continuous movement.

One word of warning: don't try and park it at the very start of a timelinem otherwise you may accidentally lose the first frame. Better to start it a few frames in and then use Find empty time slots to close the gap.

spurrymoses · Post by **spurrymoses** » Sun May 07, 2006 9:51 pm

Thanks Devil,

I just tried a little experiment, I dragged the GIF in from Explorer and it works! It shows 2 frames and it can't be expanded.

However, if you add it via the Timeline | Right-click | Image File it doesn't work - and can be expanded. So, doing it this way, it becomes a normal static GIF.

So the rule, at the moment, is only add GIF's via Drag-and-Drop from Explorer to cover all GIF sizes

My rough guess is it's something to do with Default inserted clip duration in Preferences. My setting is currently '50 frames'. Somehow, using Timeline | Right-click | Image File forces it to use the default clip duration (forcing a static GIF), but dragging from Explorer doesn't adhere to this preference.

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Mon May 08, 2006 9:28 am

I imported it as a video clip, not as an image file.

spurrymoses · Post by **spurrymoses** » Mon May 08, 2006 11:23 am

Ah, OK. So it has some underlying justification. That is, to import animated files, whether it's actually video or just an animated format, in both cases the Import Video option must be used - or drag from Explorer, which has the same effect.

spurrymoses · Post by **spurrymoses** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 4:02 am

I just had this problem again and found my own answer!

Would it be worth logging this as a bug?
Basically choosing an image via the "Insert Image File" doesn't work at all for animated GIFs!

Just to be clear
1) Dragging an animated GIF in from Explorer and dropping into MediaStudioPro - works. The animated GIF animates when rendered.

2) Right-clicking on the timeline and choosing "+Image File",and selecting an animate GIF file does not work. The GIF does not animate when rendered.

Am I the only one who lost hair over this?

Post by **Ron P.** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 4:20 am

Hi Spurry,

If you consider that an animated GIF is the most basic form of a video. A video is just a succession of images. So inserting an animated GIF as a video, then MSP can play the animation. Inserting as an image, then MSP only sees the first frame, which just like the second is a static image. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I would guess that when you drag-n-drop it, MSP is seeing both (or all) frames and thinks it is a video clip.