Animated Avitars/Banners

[No]

[COLOR=DarkSlateBlue][FONT=Trebuchet MS][I]Alright. I have a big question about the animated avitars/banners. I have the clip that i want. But I dont know where to put it and it keeps showing up as a windows movie maker file. How can I change that and the size.

If I can get help will someone help me? And I hope I posted this in the correct area. Please help! Thank you in advance![/I][/FONT][/COLOR]

[James]

[color=#707875]It is very, very unlikely that you'll be able to translate a Movie Maker file to a workable GIF, in terms of size.

OB will only allow a certain memory allocation for avatars and this means that generally, any animated avatar can only contain a finite number of frames -- especially if you're wanting to produce an avatar of the maximum dimensions.

Banners are a different story, because they offer larger variations in sizes and there are no specific memory limits on them. However, if someone were attempting to use an extremely high-memory animation in their signature, we'd have to consider deleting it. It would slow down things for too many users.

In terms of converting a Movie Maker file to GIF...I am not sure what you can do, other than taking the individual frames, turning them into images and then using an animation program to create a GIF. I recommend a frame-by-frame solution because of the memory limitations of the web; there's no way that you'll be able to convert any kind of actual movie file of any significant size to a workable GIF for the boards.[/color]

[AzureWolf]

[font=Georgia][color=blue]Alright, I'm going to be kind of vague ([plug]I might do a more thorough walkthrough in my myOtaku sometime with pictures[/plug]), but here goes...[/color][/font]
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[*][font=Georgia][color=#0000ff]Get [url="http://download.com.com/3000-2194-10249735.html?tag=lst-0-1"]VirtualDub[/url]. a free, open-source program that'll handle most of the video editing parts of the process.[/color][/font]
[*][font=Georgia][color=#0000ff]Next, open the clip in VirtualDub. Select the starting point of what you want by using the black arrow that points to the left. Get to the end of the sequence and click the black arrow that points to the right. There should now be a darkened area in the timed area.[/color][/font]
[*][font=Georgia][color=#0000ff]Now, you'll probably want to crop the selection (if you want to do it, this point is usually the best place to do it). To do that, you go to Video --> Filters, and add a "null transform," at which point the "cropping" option becomes available. Now, crop.[/color][/font]
[*][font=Georgia][color=#0000ff]When you are done adding any filters and effects (you could use other video editing programs for effects, but come back to VirtualDub when you have [i]EXACTLY[/i] what you want as your GIF), go to file --> Save Image Sequence...[/color][/font]
[*][font=Georgia][color=#0000ff]Lastly, if you have Adobe ImageReady, you can simply go to File --> Import --> Folder As Frames. You've got your primary GIF.[/color][/font]
[/list][font=Georgia][color=#0000ff]I imagine other animation programs have an option to load multiple pictures, but I'm familiar with only ImageReady and GIF Construction Set.[/color][/font]