So I decided to write a tutorial on how to make animated Signatures. Other members here on PCApex, have figured out how to do it with Adobe Imageready... but two things.. one you were limited on the types of movie files you could use ( i may be wrong but I think you can only use .mov and .mpeg nothing with divx codec's) two money... most people don't have a ton of extra cash sitting around so they can buy a piece of software they might use once or twice.


After doing a ton of research i found out how to do it... i took a program called Virtual Dub http://www.virtualdub.org/ i used that to cut the the movie files and to resize the movie files down to size where they would fit on a sig. A drawback to this program was when you resized you had to know the ratio or the movies would come out messed up. Next i did a search on google for avi to gif converters and a whole bunch came back. At first i used the demos until they expired and then i would move on to the next one. the issue, how ever was not all programs were made the same. Some of them, would only support one or two codec's... well my anime collection is a mix of codec's!! Once you got your gif image you would use a program called the gimp (open source version of Photoshop) http://www.gimp.org/ i will go into detail on how to use this later...


Well after tons of trials i have come up with an easy way to do sigs.. I broke down and bought a avi to gif converter for 12$$ you can find it here http://www.minihttpserver.net/video-gif-convert/ this is the only thing you need to buy.. and it makes life easy, so i highly recommend it. I will do my tutorial using this program and the gimp.

1. You will need a movie file. simple enough.
2. You will need to have the right codec's installed. If you can play the movie in media player then you have the right codec's installed.
3. Open up Video to GIF/JPEG converter and click on the open video box

4. Explore to your video, once you have selected the video it will start playing...
5. Choose where you want to have your gif start and end, to do this press the set start and set end butons

6. Next you are going to select the latency. This relates to the speed of the gif. I recommend doing between 75 to 100 .

7. Now Click on the Capture Frames Button. This process might take a while if you have a slow computer.

8. Now we need to resize the picture, So where it says Crop frame and shows 100% we want to change it so its more around 28 to 32% when you look at the picture size it will look like 640x480 (example) we want the second number to be less then 150 (PCApex Forum Rules)

9. Now if you need to remove any frames now is the time to do it. Your sig should have a max of 90 frames ( that will leave your sig at about 2mb in size) To Remove Frames highlight them and hit the remove frame button. After the frame has been removed it will show a X next to the frame..

10. now hit the save button.. and once that is done open up Gimp
11. I am going to presume that you have already made your signature, so open that up inside of the gimp. next open up the gif that you just made.
12. Here is where it gets fun!!! Bring the Gif into focus and press Control + L, this will bring up the layer screen. What you will need to do is click between the picture of an eye and the picture of the frame. this will make a chain icon appear (see pic) you will want to put the chain icon on all the frames ( i will explain why later)

13. Once you have done that, you will highlight the background frame and drag and drop it on to your signature. don't worry if it covers up something on your sig, as we will move it around later. once that has been done you will see something like this:
14. now you will need to focus on the gif image again, and drag and drop the next layer... rinse and repeat until all frames have been dragged onto your sig. ( i never said this was easy)
15. now you are going to need to move the animated part. Because you put a chain mark next to the layers, when you move one layer they all move to do this you will need to select the move tool and highlight the animated part and drag it.


16. now you will want to see how it looks before you save it. Right click your sig and goto Filters --> animation --> Playback.

17. Once you are happy with the way it looks you will need to save it, So go to File --> Save as. you will want to name it so it has the .gif extension on it

18. next you will see a screen that is asking you for more options... choose save as animation and convert it to indexed.....


19. on the next screen just make sure loop forever is selected and then you are done

Let me know if you have any questions

That avi to gif program keeps crashing on me....I open a movie and it just crashes O.o

i would try two things...... reinstall the codec (or use a diffrent codec) or reinstall the program

Excellent tutorial

Yep, +rep for you, ThrillKill. Always nice to see members taking the time to teach others.

The only thing you forgot was to teach people how to be creative.

And when Less is More.

Otherwise, great job.

Dick
If you need a sig there are some talented people here, and I am sure one of them would be more than glad to assist!

Hi all
I use VidGIF.It`'s convert avi to gif.I use it long time and I haven't problem with it!
:k ing::kin g: