Animated Gif

**DMerchen** · 11 December 2008, 04:33 PM

I have been working on some graphics for my work and I am now working on the Christmas card. They want it animated to send out to customers, but I am questioning if I am doing some things correct especially the B and O in the frame pallet. If I make one image the background, and I make the others overlays, will the background image show through and the overlay is simply the added graphic? I would assume this reduces the gif animation by quite a bit if this is the case. Instead of redrawing the image several times it would simply show the background and the particular overlay. Is this correct? I am under a time crunch, but I searched through the forum real quick and I didn't come up with anything on this subject, and I have been unable to test this out since coming up with this thought in my head. Any assistance is appreciated.

**handrawn** · 11 December 2008, 04:41 PM

Hi

from xtreme help [ver 2 - Ver 4 is not so helpful maybe ]:

Frame Gallery - Background and Overlay Settings

Xara Xtreme uses frames to create animated GIF files. Next to the frames listed in the Frame Gallery are two columns of switches. For each frame the left-hand switch indicates whether the frame is a background frame and the right-hand switch whether it overlays earlier frames. The settings of these switches can be changed simply by clicking on them.
Background
If this is set, then the frame covers all previous frames. This is useful if you want to create a background and then build up an animation on top of this background. Often the first frame in the animation is a Background frame.
If the first frame is not a background frame, the Animated GIF uses the page background as its background. In Xara Xtreme you can set up the document background to the same color or bitmap as the final web page. This lets you create bitmaps that blend seamlessly with the web page background. For details see Changing the background section in the help.
Overlay
If this is set, then the frame overlays the previous frame.
Possible values are both off or one option on. Both on is invalid because a Background frame covers earlier frames and so nothing shows through - there is nothing to overlay.
B O
Off Off Render this frame over the current background.
On Off Render this frame on its own, overwriting all previous frames. This frame now becomes the current background and forms the background for all subsequent frames.
Off On Render this frame on top of the previous frame.
Examples
• An animation that shows ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ in sequence on a colored background. This requires four frames. Frame 1 is just the background and has Background on. Frame 2 shows ‘A’ and has both options off. Frames 3 and 4 show ‘B’ and ‘C’ and also have both options off.
• An animation that builds up ‘A’, ‘AB’ ‘ABC’. Frame 1 shows the background and ‘A’ and has Background on. Frame 2 shows ‘B’ and has Overlay on. This overlays the frame over frame 1 and you see ‘AB’. Frame 3 shows ‘C’ and also has Overlay on. Building up an animation in this way is more efficient than making each frame a Background frame. The final animated GIF only needs to store the changes between frames and so frames 2 and 3 require less space than if they were Background frames.
Tip
To make a sequence of frames background or overlay, set the switch for the first frame and Shift-click on switch for the last frame. The background/overlay settings of all the frames in between change too.

**Ron Duke** · 11 December 2008, 04:48 PM

Steve,
How come your images don't show on my screen?

**handrawn** · 11 December 2008, 04:51 PM

those are links in the text of the xtreme ver 2 help Ron - so local to my machine - I guess I should have taken them out - you cannot view them from the web

**Ron Duke** · 11 December 2008, 04:57 PM

Ok....nuts.

**handrawn** · 11 December 2008, 04:59 PM

they are links to other help sections which link to other help sections which link to....... well you know how it works

I ll take them out

**handrawn** · 11 December 2008, 05:05 PM

done

**DMerchen** · 11 December 2008, 05:17 PM

Wow, thanks for the rapid response. That was incredibly helpful too. When I pulled up the help in V4, it did not explain it as well as this. I guess they figure a person should have it figured out by now. Well, now I have some work to do. I must rebuild my gif. I will post the results here. I guess I missed the show submit deadline already.

Thanks for the help.

**handrawn** · 11 December 2008, 05:21 PM

animated gif is old hat to some

- good luck, glad it was helpful

**DMerchen** · 12 December 2008, 02:22 PM

And here it is. That information was monumental to my getting this done. I am pleased with the results. I had hoped for perhaps a bit more, or I had envisioned a little different look in my head rather, but I think it is ok. What I really like is the quality output that Xara allows me to maintain. With other programs, this animation came out to be a large file or was extremely dithered to try to keep the file size smaller. That, I am extremely pleased with. Thanks again for the valuable information.