Re: [ferret_users] convert GIFs to movie

["William S. Kessler" <william.s.kessler@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ryo -

I use whirlgif (http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/whirlgif.html for linux, http://whirlgif.darwinports.com/ 
 for MacOSX). It's a simple and fast routine that concatenates gifs.  
It doesn't change any colors. The output is an animated gif that plays  
on any system, or on a web page. (I haven't tried it using VLC on  
Windows). The output size is the size of all the gifs together plus a  
tiny amount.

I've attached an example so you can try it using VLC. This is simply 5  
gifs that were easy to string together and make a small movie (124Kb).

By the way, I find this is a nice way to flick through a series of  
similar plots; i.e., not watching it as a movie but just using the  
arrow keys to look at them one at a time, go back and forth, etc.

Billy

On Oct 4, 2010, at 1:36 PM, Ryo Furue wrote:

> Hi Ferret users,
>
> This is not a Ferret question, but I guess there are many Ferret
> users who can help or who may be interested in this discussion.
>
> Basically I need to generate a movie from a time series.  Normally,
> I generate a set of GIF files with Ferret and use "ffmpeg" or
> the "convert" command (from ImageMagick).
>
> The problem I'm facing now is that such movies cannot be played
> correctly by VLC (a movie player) on Windowns, which my colleague
> has to use.  On VLC, the color is off (looks weird).
>
> So, basically, I'd like to hear what methods/tools other people
> are using.  I'd like to try them and test the results on VLC.
>
> Or, if anybody knows how to fix VLC, it would be wonderful.
>
> Other things I tried were
>
> - Use a Windows version of ffmpeg. --> Same result (bad color).
> - Use "Open Video Converter" --> Produces a perfect video,
>    but cannot handle large input data.
> - Use "Fx GIF Converter" --> Produces a video that plays
>    correctly on VLC, but the image quality is very low and
>    there are no parameters or switches to adjust.
>
> Things I haven't tried are
>
> - Explore parameters of ffmpeg.  There are simply too many
>  parameter combinations, so that a trial-and-error method
>  isn't practical.  If somebody could suggest a parameter
>  combination, I'd appreciate it very much.
>
> - Explore mencoder.  Same reason as the above.  I'd appreciate
>  suggestions of command-line parameters to give to mencoder.
>
> Regards,
> Ryo