Animated GIF Problems

I'm a Xara animated GIF virgin (just bought a new PC and the old software I used to use for animated GIFs doesn't work with Vista).

So, I have opened a blank animation document and pasted the objects I want to use into it. My problem is that it's clear you have to set the page size to the export size and the pasted documents land off the page. When I reposition them It's fine but even if I re-copy and paste them for subsequent frames they still end up off the page.

Do I have to redraw everything to get it all in place or am I missing something obvious here?

I've tried it in both V5 and V4. Same deal.

Make use of the 'Copy frame' button in the frame gallery and use 'paste in place' (Ctrl+SHIFT+V) to copy objects from one frame to another and have them land in the same spot Jimi.

Have I understood you correctly? :o

Thanks Sledger. I've done it the long winded way now, but I'll remember that for next time.

I'm pleased with the file size of the resulting file. The overlay option helped a lot. My previous software was one whole pic at a time.

Still having a few problems creating these little blighters.

And little being the keyword here. Usually when I'm doing animated GIFs they tend to be fairly small (buttons etc). Assuming that I need to make the page size the size of the object concerned, it would seem that my object is often smaller than the minimum page size that Xtreme allows.

Again, am I missing something obvious?

Are you still having problems with pasting objects ? If you have the object you want in place in one frame, then you just copy the frame and it will be in the the same place in the new frame.

if you export your animation from xtreme as a gif, the size will be the size of your object boundary [as if they were all grouped] - not your page size

thinking about it, AFAIK the page only is useful if you are composing/exporting frames as stills, when you have the usual options

not quite that simple - the page is a maximum boundary - no problem if your animation is smaller..

Just played around some more and I seem to be able to export and the resulting GIF is the size of all the objects. Which is fine as long as the background object is white (i.e. the same as the page colour) otherwise it doesn't work out to well, as checking the transpaency box doesn't seem to be working for me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jimi King

Which is fine as long as the background object is white (i.e. the same as the page colour) otherwise it doesn't work out to well, as checking the transpaency box doesn't seem to be working for me.

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I don't know if this is the same problem, but if I set the ‘background transparent’ option it composes everything against white instead of whatever colour I had set as background. Sometimes it appears to change the background colour to white on-screen to reflect this, sometimes not. (And sometimes it changes in the middle of a redraw — cacheing problem maybe?)

I've always had to post-process in another tool to make Xtreme's animated GIF export with transparency anti-aliased into a non-white background; if there's a ‘real’ way to do it I'd be interested to know. Non-animated GIF export is unaffected.

(And I too would like to be able to create documents smaller than the current seemingly-arbitrary ‘minimum size’, which is often larger than the simple animated icons I'm intended to produce.)

Well thanks Bob. At least it's not just me.

The ability to overlay objects makes Xtreme potentially great at producing smaller files, but the luxury of being able to export a transparency created against a coloured background (to eliminate jagged edges) would really make it usable.

Maybe I'm wrong but did you use control and drag a color onto the white page and then set the background to transparent under gif options? If that is what you did then things are working properly and you will prob. get some sort of a white frame around your animation. If on the other hand you create whatever you want as a background object then create the animation on top of that it should work like you want with no white frame or jaggies.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

I did the latter. But the backgound object (part of which was a small rectangle which was the page colour) ends up with a white frame around it when reproduced on the page.

This is normal when I export GIFs or JPGs from Xtreme. I normally get arouund it by placing everything on a larger square or rectangle of the same colour on a background layer and exporting all the objects except the background layer and this works fine.

Please tell me if I'm wrong but if I try that with an animation my resulting GIF becomes the size of all the objects INCLUDING the larger rectangle. There's no way I can just export a selection of objects.

Hi Jimi,

I think you have found a bug in the Xtreme 5 animated gif export.

If you select transparent background and preview your animation before exporting the objects are given a white background and is anti-aliased to white.

If you export the animation without preview the gif is anti-aliased to the colour of your background and can be used on a web page with that background colour.

I'll make a report to Xara about this odd behaviour.

Hmm, you're on to something here!

Also, if I export the animated GIF without first doing the preview, I get output correctly blended into the background colour (yay!). But then immediately after the export the on-screen background goes back to white. Yet exporting again still produces the original background colour!

So there's no way that I can produce an animated Gif that's smaller than 1.3cm (the minimum page size) then, is that right?

why not?

Xtreme exports only the objects and not the full page.

The attached was created in Xtreme 5.1 Pro

53 pixels x 38 pixels

Not for me it doesn't. If I use "Export Animation" (I assume that's right) it exports the page and only the page. If any of the objects go off the page they are cropped.

Ah it does in Xtreme Pro 4 though.

Sounds odd Jimi - as Bill shows, works fine from XtremePro 5 too (including the transparent background). Same for me, only the gif size is exported (108x100px), not the page size (480x320px used)

Attachment 62517

Might be worth while either removing the Xtreme 5 registry tree (it will be rebuilt with defaults when you open Xtreme again) or uninstalling then reinstalling Xtreme 5

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Xara\XtremePro\5.1
Attachment 62518

The usual warnings apply when editing the Windows registry ;)

Is the 5.1 CD imminent? If so I might wait for that and go for a re-install. I can manage using 4.0 unitl then for animated GIFs.

Sometime in July according to Xara.

http://www.xara.com/us/products/xtreme/upgrade

Quote:

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We expect to receive the first stock in July 09

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This probably means sometime early August at your door ;)

Jimi

Both Bill and Steve have only used one object in their animation and yes it will export the object only

The complication arises when you have more than one object in your animation - its then that the page size comes into play and clips your output

This is my experience - exactly the same as you in post #17

EDIt - by 'one object' I mean one contiguous set of objects - do you have un-contiguous objects in your animation, if you do that would explain it I think

as per:

[ EDIT: it appears I cannot spell 'contiguous' in the file names, sorry :o:D]

clips single sets too if they are big enough

back to what I said in post #7 - page size imposes a 'maximum' limit on the animation...... I think basically that is it, not sure that is unexpected thinking about it, just different from how it was before animations had 'pages'

what is interesting is that single set animations do not need to be on the page - provided nothing else is

if something else is, then the single set animation off page gets lost.. it would appear

Yes I agree - looks like a bug with the 'area to save' (Drawing or Page).
This is definable for .swf - but was automatic with .gif in earlier versions.
Possible that the drag-to-resize page feature has introduced this.

I will report it.

Thanks for helping Steve.

It's reassuring to know that one isn't going mad.

Or at least COMPLETELY mad. Genius and insanity are very close neighbours after all.