Pixel Joint Forum: Creating animated gifs captured from gameplay

Message

   For the last couple months I've been putting a ton of work into my new game Puzzle Depot. I'm at the stage now where I'm wanting to show off gameplay footage.

A recent stumbling block for me was creating animated gifs from video... my first attempt involved capturing video from the screen using Quicktime (UGH) and then using Photoshop to convert the video into an animated gif.

The result:

Blurred pixels, muddied colors, and a total mess of an indexed palette. I spent a while tweaking it to get something usable, but this was far from satisfactory. I tried a few other programs with similar results, until I came across Capture Wiz Pro (http://pixelmetrics.com/CapWizPro/) which allows for saving footage taken from the screen directly to an animated gif.

The result:

MUCH better... Crisp pixels, colors are true, the indexed palette is clean, better framerate (even on my old rig), and the overall filesize wasn't bad either.I thought that I would post my experiences with this, in case anyone else can benefit from it.

Are there any other programs out there that people are using for this sort of thing that I should know about?

Author	Message
Ottbot Commander Joined: 08 September 2015 Online Status: Offline Posts: 108	Topic: Creating animated gifs captured from gameplay Posted: 02 September 2015 at 2:04pm
	For the last couple months I've been putting a ton of work into my new game Puzzle Depot. I'm at the stage now where I'm wanting to show off gameplay footage. A recent stumbling block for me was creating animated gifs from video... my first attempt involved capturing video from the screen using Quicktime (UGH) and then using Photoshop to convert the video into an animated gif. The result: Blurred pixels, muddied colors, and a total mess of an indexed palette. I spent a while tweaking it to get something usable, but this was far from satisfactory. I tried a few other programs with similar results, until I came across Capture Wiz Pro (http://pixelmetrics.com/CapWizPro/) which allows for saving footage taken from the screen directly to an animated gif. The result: MUCH better... Crisp pixels, colors are true, the indexed palette is clean, better framerate (even on my old rig), and the overall filesize wasn't bad either.I thought that I would post my experiences with this, in case anyone else can benefit from it. Are there any other programs out there that people are using for this sort of thing that I should know about?
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jalonso Admiral Joined: 29 November 2022 Online Status: Offline Posts: 13537	Posted: 02 September 2015 at 2:16pm
	Reminder that PJ previews should be under 10k. You did that yesterday too but did not update. Gallery front page updated now :)
	PJs FAQ <•> Sticky Reads
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Ottbot Commander Joined: 08 September 2015 Online Status: Offline Posts: 108	Posted: 02 September 2015 at 2:22pm
	Man I've been bad about that lately... At least one of us is paying attention! Fixed :P
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yrizoud Commander Joined: 03 May 2021 Location: France Online Status: Offline Posts: 343	Posted: 02 September 2015 at 4:29pm
	There's LICEcap which is simple and free (GPL). I've used it once to record a lightweight "howto". Here's a GIF capture of using LICEcap to make a GIF capture. Inception!
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Ottbot Commander Joined: 08 September 2015 Online Status: Offline Posts: 108	Posted: 03 September 2015 at 10:35am
	Thanks yrizoud, that's incredibly helpful! This is exactly what I needed... and the price is right, too! Captured with LICEcap today: Perfection!
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