Re: Movies/Animations (gif to mpeg)

[kessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Billy Kessler)]

A real easy way to make movies from gif files out of ferret
is a public domain utility called whirlgif. I use it under
Sun Solaris, but the documentation seems to say it is available
for a variety of systems.

Whirlgif is extremely easy to use:

1. Make your gif files with a command like:

yes? repeat/l=1:36 (go scriptfile `l`; frame/file=whirl-`l`.gif)

where the scriptfile uses the argument l to determine the plot.

2. Make a file (I call it whirlgif-infile) that consists of a list
of the gif files (including repeats if you want):

whirl-1.gif
whirl-2.gif
...

3. From the command line use whirlgif to make the movie:

> whirlgif -o movie_filename.gif -i whirlgif-infile

That's it. Whirlgif simply concatentates the gif files with whatever 
connecting info is needed. The resulting movie gif file is just about
as large as the sum of the input frames.

These show nicely on the web, or you can use xanim (under unix)
to view locally.

I downloaded whirlgif from 

http://www.msg.net/utility/whirlgif/

or the mirror site:

http://www.danbbs.dk/~dino/whirlgif/index.html

which has extensive documentation. But I found that it is one of
those programs that you simply do, and it works. There's not much
to it.

Billy K
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William S. Kessler
NOAA / Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory
7600 Sand Point Way NE
Seattle Wa 98115 USA

Tel: 206-526-6221                    o__    ____ 
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