ADN

Hi to all,
I need a software that can:

- Convert avi files to gif;
- Apply video effect (like star-wipe,peel etc)
- Apply gif optimization
- Apply lossy setting

I use windows Vista Ultimate..
I just use Ulead Animation 5 but I think is not so compatible with Vista because it run one day and the other no :D !

Thanks a lot in advance

Damn, I was just about to say Ulead, but I haven't tried to run it on Vista...Are there not any patches or a Vista ready version..? I want to say Irfanview can make and handle .gif files, but I'm not 100% sure...I'll check around and see what I can find...

I have not tried it myself, but I hear good things about GIMP. Don't know about gifs.
http://www.gimp.org/

Hey man, some answers to your requirements.

1) Convert avi files to gif
Media Player Classic
PowerDVD
VirtualDub
Sony Vegas
Adobe Premiere Pro

I think these softwares will save screen grabs out as BMP (not GIF) from memory. You should be able to automate the process with Virtualdub and maybe Vegas/Premiere Pro.
It depends on how much video you want to dump as separate images to create an animated GIF. Look at my avatar chick for example. She's created by dumping selected frames out of the video, cropping and resizing then loading them in order to create a GIF. But you have to be mindfull of the GIF size. Already my chicky is probably overkill b/c she takes a while to load up on a slow connection (I consider her file size "big" even in the days of broadband).

2) Apply video effect (like star-wipe,peel etc)
Sony Vegas
Adobe Premiere Pro

3) Apply gif optimization + Apply lossy setting
Photoshop and GIMP can do this.
GIMP is free. A tutorial that you might find helpful is here: http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/1664.html

Photoshop, GIMP and Irfanview can convert BMP to GIF (single image GIF). Irfanview can convert a batch really easy but I think its slightly more inconvenient to batch convert with GIMP and Photoshop.

Hope this is helpful.

Ask if you need more help. I haven't fiddled with this stuff in ages but I or someone else here may know the answer.

Thanks a lot to all...
I think I will solve this problem with Image ready + Vegas (or Premier)

but I have to tell you...

that Ulead is not support on Vista, but it works anyway, the problem is that Ulead crashes even on winxp because of video i/o problem!
When you install more video codec on windows, unlead goes in conflict with them...
so you have to fix it erasing video i/o folder or delete one to one the files that are in it and trying to start the program!
but when you delete a certain file you will loose the support to that video type.

We have the best tech support on the net, fucking hands down..! Great work 5929, and zap, as always...