RE: [Sheflug] Producing Animations

[(Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11-Jun-03 Nicola Richmond wrote:
> OK, I've had a look at ImageMagick and have managed to produce an
> animation with the command
> 
> convert animation*.png animation.gif
> 
> (can also do mng, avi and mpeg I think) but I've not managed to work
> out how to ensure that the animation isn't looped. The pause option
> can only be used with the animate command which I think can only be
> used to actually play the animation - not to create it. I could botch
> it and make duplicate the last frame, and make the penultimate stay on
> screen for a while......
> 
> Anyway, enough rambling - I've just had a few glasses of wine....

What you've done there, with 'convert', is to create an animated GIF: a
single image file which encpasulates several images. To play this you
need a viewer (e.g. netscape or mozilla) which will display animated GIFs
as, well, animated.

Ordinary viewers (like 'xv', or ImageMagick's own 'display') won't.

To stop this looping, you can create it with option "-loop 0"
(see 'man convert').

I think you're right, that the pause option only applies to 'animate'.

Now 'animate' doesn't build a composite file, but simply displays
a sequence of image files (whatever they may be). If you click the
mouse on the animation while it's running, you'll get a side-panel
with buttons

"Animate"    --> "Open", "Play", "Step", "Repeat", "Auto Reverse"
"Speed"      --> "Faster", "Slower"
"Direction"  --> "Forward", "Reverse"
...
"Quit"

So you can use the top button to halt it at the end by choosing "Step";
the "pause" option would be useful here, in giving you enough time to do
this when the sequence has reached its end.

Interestingly, 'animate' itself displays animated GIFs, so you can have
one of these in your sequence of images --- animation of the sequence
will hold on this one until it has played itself out, before moving on.

You can also put animated GIFs inside an animated GIF using 'convert'
as above, opening the door to I don't know what depth of recursion ...
Please have more wine before embarking on this (apologies for tasteless
remarks last time about crisps and lager).

Ted.


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Date: 12-Jun-03                                       Time: 00:47:13
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