Noob - Achieve the coin affect

[nadger]

Hi all

well like many who end up here i was looking for a way to make our football club logo spin like they do on sky sports and came across this spinning coin thread.

Thanks to the excellent tut zipped up on the first page i've succeeded in producing something along the lines of what i wanted, but i have a few issues im hoping you'll be able to suggest fixes for.

I am completely new to xara software and im a complete nooby with anything much more intricate than resizing photo's in paint.net etc, but im a try'er, so i'll have a crack at most stuff before begging for help.

My first question is how do i make it spin smoothly? in xara my logo spins extremely smoothly but once exported as a an animated gif it become slighlty jerky and every cycle or two it freezes half way through for a split second. I dont have any time delays set and have tried several of the spinning animations provided with the software, but to no avail.

i'll try to load it here...

any other suggestions you think will improve it are very welcome also.

sorry one other thing, pls could someone tell me how to make the "surround" or background smaller? by this i mean i need the spinning logo to reach pretty much to the sides of the background due to where on our website i need to put it. if i havn't explained this bit very well pls let me know and i'll try to explain differently. thanks