Exporting an animation

In this and other chapters of this guide, you learned about making animations with VSE Animation Maker. By practicing techniques you learned and by adding your own imagination, you can create animations that you may want to use as illustrations in a multimedia program or for an Internet World Wide Web page.

You can export VSE Animation Maker animations to many applications providing you save your animation set in the right format. A standard Macintosh animation format is PICS and many multimedia programs can import files in this format.

For Web pages, the most popular format for displaying animations is GIF. VSE Animation Maker supports both animation formats.

Saving PICS and GIF VSE Animation Maker allows you to save animation sets as an VSE Animation Maker Set, PICS and GIF file.

The VSE Animation Maker format will be opened and saved much faster than the other formats. It also stores pieces of information that other formats don’t, such as frame names and view size. The drawback of the VSE Animation Maker Set format is that it isn’t recognized by other graphic programs yet. On the Macintosh platform, PICS is a standard animation format that many programs can open.

Note: When saving your animation as a PICS of GIF file, frame names are lost. GIF animations and PICS animations don't support alias frames.

To save an animation in the PICS format:

1. Open Animation Maker if it’s not currently running.
2. Select File > Open to open the animation set you want to save as a GIF file. The animation opens and VSE Animation Maker displays the first animation frame.
3. Select File > Save As > PICS. VSE Animation Maker displays the Save dialog box with the anima- tion name in the Name field.
4. Click Save.

Any multimedia program that can import PICS files can open this animation. Because these programs work differently, you need to refer to their documentation for specific proce- dures. Look in their documentation’s index under “Importing Files” (or a similar entry) for this information.

To save an animation in the GIF format:

1. Open Animation Maker if it’s not currently running.
2. Select File > Open to open the animation set you want to save as a GIF file. The animation opens and VSE Animation Maker displays the first animation frame.
3. Select File > Save As > GIF....
   VSE Animation Maker displays a dialog box with the following options:
   
   General
   
   Include comment
   Allows you to include your comment from the settings dialog box. For example, a comment can contain a notice about who and when created the animation. If you don’t include your comment the GIF file will be smaller.
   
   Include image delay times
   Includes the image delay times you set in the frames window.
   
   Include loop information
   Includes the loop information you set in the Settings dialog box.
   
   Transparency
   
   Transparency is useful when having a web site with a colorful background.
   
   None
   No transparency information will be saved.
   
   Based on first pixel
   The color of the first pixel in the top left corner will be the color used for transparency.
   
   Other
   Allows you to choose any other color.
   
   
4. Click Save.
   VSE Animation Maker saves your animation as a GIF file. The icon for the animation set indicates that it has been saved in the GIF format.

Using a GIF animation on a web page

Save your animation as a GIF animation. This GIF animation can be imported as a normal image by any HTML editor. Refer to the manual of your HTML editor for further information on how to include a GIF image on your web pages.

The HTML code looks like that: <img scr="image.gif">

Convert to QuickTime

Maybe you want to create a sort of “stand alone animation“ so that you can send it to your friends who don’t have VSE Animation Maker. In that case, you should convert your animation to a QuickTime movie.

To convert an animation to the QuickTime format:

1. Open Animation Maker if it’s not currently running.
2. Select File > Open to open the animation set you want to save as a QuickTime movie. The animation opens and AM displays the first animation frame.
3. Select File > Save As > PICS. AM displays the Save dialog box with the anima- tion name in the Name field.
4. Click Save.
5. Open Apple MoviePlayer.
6. Select File > Open to open that PICS animation.
7. Select File > Save. Now your animation is converted to a QuickTime movie.

Note: You need QuickTime Pro to convert your PICS images.