Movie Clip Howto

Movie clips make great fodder for animated userpics. The problem is the trailers are gigantic. So you have to learn to be very selective in the frames you grab. Here's a clip from Escaflowne that turned out perfect for a loop. Other clips look jerky when they reset to the beginning.

Two programs support the importing of Quicktime and other video files: Imageready and Ulead GIF Animator. Jasc Animation Shop will import MPEG and FLI/FLC files, but not the more common Quicktimes movie trailers. When you've gotten the video clips imported, you'll want to resize them and remove a lot of extra frames. A good rule of thumb for movie clips that you should use is to expect about 10 or 15 frames as a 100x100 GIF animation.

Imageready

1. Open the video as any other file.
2. If you already know the times you want, set them. Otherwise, use the preview window sliders to select the time.
3. Now you can work with it as a regular animation.

UGA

1. Open an existing video.
2. If you know the particular segment you want, set the duration to capture that segment. The times may be a little different from the time when viewed on Quicktime, so add a second to the beginning and end to widen the selection.
3. Now you can work with it like a regular animation.

Jasc Animation Shop

1. Open the video as any other file.
2. If you already know the frames you want, set them. Otherwise grab the whole video.
3. Now you can work with it as a regular animation.