Convert jpeg's to animated gif - Out of memory

Hi,

I'm trying to convert 246 jpeg's into an animated gif. Each jpeg is 36KB (640x480 photo) so in total 9 MB of jpeg's.

The problem is as I do an "Import -> Folder as Frames" in ImageReady 7.0 the .psd is 215 MB when I save it. :-(

This monster file just kills my computer. (An Athlon XP 1600+, 240 MB RAM). I tried to increase the Windows XP swap file to over 800 MB, but this didn't work.

Question:

Why the huge jump in file size? From 9 to 215 MB???

How can I convert my jpegs to an animated gif? Can it be done in small steps maybe?

Kind regards

Magnus

"Magnus" wrote in message

Hi,

I'm trying to convert 246 jpeg's into an animated gif. Each jpeg is 36KB (640x480 photo) so in total 9 MB of jpeg's.

The problem is as I do an "Import -> Folder as Frames" in ImageReady 7.0 the .psd is 215 MB when I save it. :-(

This monster file just kills my computer. (An Athlon XP 1600+, 240 MB RAM). I tried to increase the Windows XP swap file to over 800 MB, but this didn't work.

Question:

Why the huge jump in file size? From 9 to 215 MB???

Well, because each JPEG must be uncompressed when it's
loaded and converted to GIF. It may be only 36KB *on your hard disk*, but look at the *memory usage* (in the lower left corner) once it's loaded into Photoshop (or any other graphic viewer/editor). You'll find it's over 100K and possibly over 200K per file.

How can I convert my jpegs to an animated gif? Can it be done in small steps maybe?

1. Check your memory settings in Photoshop. If it's set to something stupid like 100% or 95%, drop it down to 80 or 85% so the operating system isn't starved of memory.

2. Make sure adequate disk space exists on your Photoshop temp drive. You should have at least 3x the amount of free space as your combined PSD, or ~650MB. Preferably more.

3. Keep your Windows pagefile at its larger setting (you said over 800MB).

4. If nothing else works, add more memory to your system.

Wow. A 246 image animated gif. You are going to have a big file no matter what you do.

Here are some other things to try.

Break the jpegs into smaller groups. After you import into ImageReady, check the Optimization window. Set the colors to the lowest setting while maintaining image quality. If you do the images as six separate 41 image gifs you may be able to combine them easier.

Jimmy wrote:

"Magnus" wrote in message

Hi,

I'm trying to convert 246 jpeg's into an animated gif. Each jpeg is 36KB (640x480 photo) so in total 9 MB of jpeg's.

The problem is as I do an "Import -> Folder as Frames" in ImageReady 7.0 the .psd is 215 MB when I save it. :-(

This monster file just kills my computer. (An Athlon XP 1600+, 240 MB RAM). I tried to increase the Windows XP swap file to over 800 MB, but this didn't work.

Question:

Why the huge jump in file size? From 9 to 215 MB???

Well, because each JPEG must be uncompressed when it's
loaded and converted to GIF. It may be only 36KB *on your hard disk*, but look at the *memory usage* (in the lower left corner) once it's loaded into Photoshop (or any other graphic viewer/editor). You'll find it's over 100K and possibly over 200K per file.

How can I convert my jpegs to an animated gif? Can it be done in small steps maybe?

1. Check your memory settings in Photoshop. If it's set to something stupid like 100% or 95%, drop it down to 80 or 85% so the operating system isn't starved of memory.

2. Make sure adequate disk space exists on your Photoshop temp drive. You should have at least 3x the amount of free space as your combined PSD, or ~650MB. Preferably more.
3. Keep your Windows pagefile at its larger setting (you said over 800MB).

4. If nothing else works, add more memory to your system.

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 19:07:06 +0100, Magnus
wrote:

Hi,

I'm trying to convert 246 jpeg's into an animated gif. Each jpeg is 36KB (640x480 photo) so in total 9 MB of jpeg's.

The problem is as I do an "Import -> Folder as Frames" in ImageReady 7.0 the .psd is 215 MB when I save it. :-(

This monster file just kills my computer. (An Athlon XP 1600+, 240 MB RAM). I tried to increase the Windows XP swap file to over 800 MB, but this didn't work.

Question:

Why the huge jump in file size? From 9 to 215 MB???

How can I convert my jpegs to an animated gif? Can it be done in small steps maybe?

It can. And I'm sure that the US could invade Iran as well. Whether it's a sensible thing to do is another question. What you are trying to is exactly what Flash was created for - it will make animations with ease and give you tiny file sizes.

--

Hecate - The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Hecate wrote:

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 19:07:06 +0100, Magnus

I'm trying to convert 246 jpeg's into an animated gif. Each jpeg is 36KB (640x480 photo) so in total 9 MB of jpeg's.

The problem is as I do an "Import -> Folder as Frames" in ImageReady 7.0 the .psd is 215 MB when I save it. :-(

How can I convert my jpegs to an animated gif? Can it be done in small steps maybe?

It can. And I'm sure that the US could invade Iran as well. Whether it's a sensible thing to do is another question. What you are trying to is exactly what Flash was created for - it will make animations with ease and give you tiny file sizes.

When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. :)

So let me elaborate. The 246 images are of a room. Each minute a picture was taken, and now I would like to make this into a slideshow.

I'm sure there are many ways to do this, but I'm doing this as a test for another similar future project. The result needs to be in .gif format, so I can use it on the web. Flash or Mpg/Avi etc. is not an option. Now how should I go about solving this?

An example would be this animation:
http://www.johnstonefitness.com/php/t_ani_1_year.php (11 MB)

// Magnus

bogus wrote:

Wow. A 246 image animated gif. You are going to have a big file no matter what you do.

Not a problem, just playing around for now - testing if/how it can be done.

Here are some other things to try.

Break the jpegs into smaller groups. After you import into ImageReady, check the Optimization window. Set the colors to the lowest setting while maintaining image quality. If you do the images as six separate 41 image gifs you may be able to combine them easier.

Much better, now I just need to merge the 5 gifs I've got.

Jimmy wrote:

Well, because each JPEG must be uncompressed when it's
loaded and converted to GIF. It may be only 36KB *on your hard disk*, but look at the *memory usage* (in the lower left corner) once it's loaded into Photoshop (or any other graphic viewer/editor). You'll find it's over 100K and possibly over 200K per file.

Jimmy, thank you for the information, very help.

Kind Regards

Magnus

In article <cut06e$2hok$ says...

Hecate wrote:

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 19:07:06 +0100, Magnus

I'm trying to convert 246 jpeg's into an animated gif. Each jpeg is 36KB (640x480 photo) so in total 9 MB of jpeg's.

The problem is as I do an "Import -> Folder as Frames" in ImageReady 7.0 the .psd is 215 MB when I save it. :-(

How can I convert my jpegs to an animated gif? Can it be done in small steps maybe?

It can. And I'm sure that the US could invade Iran as well. Whether it's a sensible thing to do is another question. What you are trying to is exactly what Flash was created for - it will make animations with ease and give you tiny file sizes.

When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. :)
So let me elaborate. The 246 images are of a room. Each minute a picture was taken, and now I would like to make this into a slideshow.
I'm sure there are many ways to do this, but I'm doing this as a test for another similar future project. The result needs to be in .gif format, so I can use it on the web. Flash or Mpg/Avi etc. is not an option. Now how should I go about solving this?

An example would be this animation:
http://www.johnstonefitness.com/php/t_ani_1_year.php (11 MB)
// Magnus

I understand that NOT having Flash could limit the creation of a Flash animation, but you state that the image must be GIF for the Web. Most animation on the Web is now in Flash format. What is the limiting factor in your particular Web page design? As Hecate states, a Flash animation would be many, many times smaller, and the format is almost universal nowadays. Am I missing something important here? Sorry to be so dense.

Hunt

"Magnus" wrote in message

An example would be this animation:
http://www.johnstonefitness.com/php/t_ani_1_year.php (11 MB)
// Magnus

Is that the same picture 20 odd times with different shorts pasted on???

"Hunt" wrote in message

[...] As Hecate states, a Flash animation would be
many, many times smaller, and the format is almost universal nowadays. Am I
missing something important here? Sorry to be so dense.

You are not missing anything.

OP! You can export from Imageready to Flash! It is built-in!

"Magnus" wrote in message

An example would be this animation:
http://www.johnstonefitness.com/php/t_ani_1_year.php (11 MB)

Ya big show-off. :)

The SWF exported from ImageReady is larger than the .GIF. Specifically, 11.7mb GIF compared to 18.8 SWF. But you can see if it loads faster by visiting http://elearning.winona.edu/jjs/tmp

In article <cuqpc9$j3b$>,
Magnus wrote:

I'm trying to convert 246 jpeg's into an animated gif. Each jpeg is 36KB (640x480 photo) so in total 9 MB of jpeg's.

The problem is as I do an "Import -> Folder as Frames" in ImageReady 7.0 the .psd is 215 MB when I save it. :-(

This monster file just kills my computer. (An Athlon XP 1600+, 240 MB RAM). I tried to increase the Windows XP swap file to over 800 MB, but this didn't work.

With only a paltry 240MB of RAM, it's not surprising you are having trouble. The first thing you need to do is buy more RAM--it's cheap. With only 240 MB of RAM, you're lucky you can do anything useful with the computer at all...it certainly is not sufficient for doing graphics work!

Question:

Why the huge jump in file size? From 9 to 215 MB???

Because a JPEG file is compressed. You are importing compressed files. ImageReady must uncompress the files to use them.

A 640x480 RGB image is 900 kilobytes uncompressed. Your folder full of images uncompresses to over 200 MB, which is exactly what ImageReady is showing you.

--
Art, photography, shareware, polyamory, kink, and more!
www.xeromag.com/franklin.html

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 15:15:43 +0100, Magnus
wrote:

How can I convert my jpegs to an animated gif? Can it be done in small steps maybe?

It can. And I'm sure that the US could invade Iran as well. Whether it's a sensible thing to do is another question. What you are trying to is exactly what Flash was created for - it will make animations with ease and give you tiny file sizes.

When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. :)
So let me elaborate. The 246 images are of a room. Each minute a picture was taken, and now I would like to make this into a slideshow.
I'm sure there are many ways to do this, but I'm doing this as a test for another similar future project. The result needs to be in .gif format, so I can use it on the web. Flash or Mpg/Avi etc. is not an option. Now how should I go about solving this?

Again, if you're doing an animation for the web, Flash is the best thing for you to use.

Given that you have such an underpowered computer, particularly in terms of RAM (treble your RAM and you might have a chance) you've got a problem. The reason for using Flash is that it will only use the *changes* from each image if done correctly, making the whole thing much smaller and more responsive.

--

Hecate - The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Magnus wrote:

Hi,

I'm trying to convert 246 jpeg's into an animated gif. Each jpeg is 36KB (640x480 photo) so in total 9 MB of jpeg's.

You can embed real movies (with real movie compression) into Flash - these would be the smallest.

Cheers,
Nicholas Sherlock

Hecate wrote:

... The reason for using Flash is that it will only use the *changes* from each image if done correctly, making the whole thing much smaller and more responsive.

The animated GIF file format also records only the changes from one frame to the next.

Andrew

"Andrew Morton" wrote in message

Hecate wrote:

... The reason for using Flash is that it will only use the *changes* from each image if done correctly, making the whole thing much smaller and more responsive.

The animated GIF file format also records only the changes from one frame to
the next.

ImageReady does a very poor job of exporting animated GIF files to SWF (Flash) files. Look, the GIF we were originally speaking of exports from ImageReady to Flash as almost 19mb, while Flash exported it to a size of
2.4mb. Flash wins. Period. See it here: http://elearning.winona.edu/jjs/tmp/
Flash at 2.4mb compared to ImageReady at 19mb. Big difference!

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 10:31:32 -0000, "Andrew Morton" wrote:

Hecate wrote:

... The reason for using Flash is that it will only use the *changes* from each image if done correctly, making the whole thing much smaller and more responsive.

The animated GIF file format also records only the changes from one frame to the next.

We're talking about IR here though and it does a pathetic job - as usual.

--

Hecate - The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui