4) The quickest way to create and play an animated GIF file.
5) HTML and animated GIFs
6) Downloading , looping and caching
7) Tips for smooth playback
8) Other options
9) Error Messages
10) Credits
11) Customer Support
12) Copyrights
1)Intro
Smart Dubbing¬ is a free tool for World Wide Web animation. It converts Quicktime movies into animated GIF 'web movies'. Movies and animations converted with Smart Dubbing play on a webpage without plugins, scripts or special software. Most graphic packages, such as Photoshop, Infini-D or Logomotion let you create Quicktime movies. With Smart Dubbing you can easily convert them to animated GIFs, which play on the WWW.
2) Basic Features
- Open and play Quicktime movies
- Convert to Animated GIF
- Multiple movie windows on your web page
- LZW Compression
- Movie scalable to reduce file size
- Movie again scalable in HTML to enlarge
- Supports tables in HTML
- Create smooth loops from harddrive
- Set frame rate, interlacing, disposal, transparancy
- Drag and drop to convert
- Batch conversion
- Balloon help
- Basic Apple Script support
3) Try Smart Dubbing Pro ¬
If you need more features, you should try Smart Dubbing Pro¬. A free demo is available from our webpage (http://www.xs4all.nl/~polder). Smart Dubbing Pro is a full-featured animated GIF tool, aimed at Web professionals and demanding Internet users. It adds the following extras:
- Converts the soundtrack of your Quicktime movies
- Java and AIFF sound playback on the Web
- Records sound, imports audio CDs.
- Converts PICS animations
- Adds movement to animations without adding file size
With Smart Dubbing Pro¬ you can create lightning fast animation and video which loads faster and plays smoother when a visitor hits you page. Smaller file sizes, faster page loads and sound support.
4)The quickest way to create and play an animated GIF file.
1) Drop a Quicktime-movie onto Smart Dubbing¬. It will automatically convert the movie into GIF-video with default settings.
2) Open Netscape 2.0
3) Select 'Open file' from the File-menu in Netscape to play the GIF-video. You will see a looping GIF-video of the same size as the original.
If you want to make a Quicktime movie from individual frames or PICT-files, try a shareware program called 'MooVer'. This handy utility creates a Quicktime movie on the fly, you can even add subtitles. It's available on all Macintosh-archives on the Internet. Find out where to get it close to your location at www.shareware.com. Smart Dubbing itself does not open PICT or GIF files. It opens Quicktime and PICS (animation-purpose, multiple picts format). We strongly recommend the combination of MooVer and Smart Dubbing for the best animated GIF results!
5) HTML and animated GIFs
You can put the animated GIF in your WWW-page by referencing to it in HTML. The syntax is <img src="movie.gif">, just as you would do with any other JPEG or GIF-picture . It will then automaticaly play as your movie gets a hit. You can also use all the other HTML-commands which you can use with pictures. For example, you can use the 'width' and 'height' tags to increase or reduce image size. Or you can create a television-like border, using the 'table' commands.
6) Downloading , looping and caching
How fast you see the animated GIF, the first time you hit a page depends on the speed of your Internet connection. You can get 'real time' speeds using fast connections. Most users with 14k4 modems will see a slowmotion during the first download. If the GIF-video is fully done it will automatically play again from the disk cache. You will then see it in real time speed (at 25 frames per second), unless you have a terribly slow computer. You can adjust the frame rate if you want to. If you don't want the movie to loop uncheck that box in the 'video options menu'. Also you can set a limited number of loops.
7)Tips for smooth playback
High resolution = good picture quality = big files = low frame rates = slow download
Low resolution = small files = high frame rates = poor picture quality
In general: for a smooth animated GIF, mediate resolution and reasonably small file size we recommend the following settings:
- Record your Quicktime-movie in pixel size 160x120, with 256 colors
- Don't use clips that are longer then 30''
- Convert it with Smart Dubbing¬ to a GIF-video with a pixel size of 80x60 (in the video options menu).
- Reference it in your HTML-document as <img src = "movie.gif" height="120" width ="160">. This will the enlarge the picture again, but you will have lost some resolution.
Depending on your movie you will have to experiment with file sizes, resolutions and pixel sizes for the best result.
For even smaller GIF files, you should try Smart Dubbing Pro¬, which has special file reduction features.
8) Other options
Size box: if you change the width of the movie in the size box, and press 'tab' it will automaticaly recalculate the height (using a 4:3 aspect ratio)
Disposal: controls the way every new frame is rendered
Interlace: When you turn this option off, you bypass the preview effect while the image is being downloaded.
Transparancy: this is for use with animations. It will tell Netscape to use color '0' (zero white) as the transparant color.
User input: This would show a new frame everytime you click the GIF-video. Netscape doens't seem to support this yet. But we've implemented it, in case they will in the future. If they do, you can have an interactive slide show on your webpage.
Balloon help: turning balloon-help on will prompt you with explanations while you use the program.
Apple Script: the following Apple Script is supported:
tell application "SmartDubbing"
make gifvideo "file" size {80, 60}
end tell
9) Error Messages
Out of memory: increase the partition size of Smart Dubbing¬ . You do this by clicking on the Apple symbol in the upper left corner of your computer and selecting the 'About Smart Dubbing' option. Then increase the preferred memory size (set it to more than1024 kb) and relaunch Smart Dubbing¬ .
Other: you should not be getting others. But if you do (frequently and consistently) contact our technical support desk.
10) Credits
Idea & Concept: Vincent Verweij (invaders@xs4all.nl)
Development & Programming: Alco Blom (alco@xs4all.nl)
11) Customer Support
You can mail us with questions, bugs, suggestions etcetera on the email adresses below. Freeware users can expect (but not demand) support if time permits. Users of Smart Dubbing Pro¬ are entitled to full unlimited customer and technical support.
Technical inquiries, bug reports: alco@xs4all.nl
General customer inquiries: invaders@xs4all.nl
Home Page: http://www.xs4all.nl/~polder
12) Copyrights
Smart Dubbing¬ is a commercial product. It's copyright is owned by Maatschap Blom/Verweij, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. It can not be copied, distributed, changed or reverse engineered. The demo is distributable only after prior permission by the authors. This also counts for CD-rom's and the Internet.
Based on GIFENCOD by David Rowley. Lempel-Zim compression based on 'compress'. Modified by Marcel Wijkstra. Copyright (C) 1989 by Jef Poskanzer. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. This software is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
The Graphics Interchange Format(c) is the Copyright property of
CompuServe Incorporated. GIF(sm) is a Service Mark property of
