Revision (current)
Last Updated by Flygon on 7/18/2010 4:01 AM
Showing a short segment of gameplay can be useful both for tutorial pages and for illustration of submissions. One way to do this is, in lieu of an all-out streaming video, is to create an animated GIF. This page documents one method for creating such an animation from a TAS.
The following tools are required:
*An RGB lossless video codec such as the [http://camstudio.org/CamStudioCodec14.exe|CamStudio codec]
*[http://www.virtualdub.org/download.html|VirtualDub]
*An account on an image hosting service such as [http://imageshack.us/|ImageShack] or [http://tinypic.com/|tinypic] is recommended.
First, you should dump an AVI using the CamStudio codec for the segment of movie that you wish to turn into an animated GIF. Don't be worried about capturing too much or too little; this can be clipped down in the next step.
Next, you want to open up the dumped AVI in VirtualDub. You can trim off excess footage by selecting the segments that should be removed using the menu options ''Set selection start'' and ''Set selection end'' and then deleting them by using the Delete button on your keyboard.
From here on, you can optionally reduce the frame rate, which is recommended for tutorial related purposes such as showing off a trick or engine bug that requires high precision. Adjusting the frame rate is done through the ''Frame rate...'' selection item under the ''Video'' menu - select ''Change frame rate to (fps)'' and set the frame rate to what is desired. For example, if you wanted to half the speed for a standard game you would change the fps to ''30'' instead of ''60''.
To export the GIF, go to the ''File'' menu and select ''Export > Animated GIF...''. Set the path, filename, and how you want the file to loop and upload the end result to a good image host.
It is recommended that your GIF be 120 frames or shorter unless the imagery inside the GIF is simple so as to reduce the file size. For example, [=http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/45/ristarue.gif|this animation] is 700ish kilobytes despite being rather short - this would be bandwidth intensive for weaker internet connections. Also, many web browsers don't play GIFs at full speed if they're faster then 30fps. ''([TODO]: Get exact fps, assuming it's standard across browsers)''
''[TODO]: Explain at some point disabling background layers that have large amounts of scrolling... or freezing the scrolls inside the emulator. I dunno... do something regarding this''