GIF help (suited file?)

[coop D.O.G.G.]

i have a mp4 video that i want to take a clip out of and stick on gifninja.com but tou cant put mp4 into movie maker. i heard that you have to convert it into a suited file or something and im pretty regular and wondered what that was. anyhelp?

[BriDen]

If the original file is under 100MB, use www.zamzar.com to convert it to .avi and then put it into MM.

[coop D.O.G.G.]

thanks! ill try that

[coop D.O.G.G.]

how long does it ussually take zamzar to send you the file to your email?

[BriDen]

how long does it ussually take zamzar to send you the file to your email?

Depends on the filesize. Bigger files will take longer, obviously. It'll be there before the end of the day for sure.

[coop D.O.G.G.]

yep just got it. for some reason it only plays on movie maker for a couple seconds. then it stops before the clip is over. maybe the file is too big.

maybe i jsut suck at makin gifs

[grimcity]

You can also use Windows Media Encoder if you're on a PC... it'll encode mp4, avi, mpeg and I think .mov's over to WMV. Install it, open it up, choose "convert a file," then export it out as a WMV file with low quality audio (or none since you don't need it) and bump the resolution down to VHS quality. That'll give you a small file size to upload to gifninja, and Windows Media Encoder is free:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/encoder/default.mspx

Alternatively, if you download a trial version of Flash, you can import video, resize it, change the frame rate (less frame rate = smaller file size) and export an animated gif with varying image quality. It's usually a trick of balancing quality with file size.