Using the Animated GIF Plug-In

Adobe Premiere 4.2 for Macintosh Using the Animated GIF plug-in

he Animated GIF plug-in is an Adobe Premiere™ 4.2 plug-in which lets you export a Premiere movie as an animated GIF ﬁle. Most Web browsers can automatically “play” the GIF as it would a T movie, without any helper applications or browser plug-ins required. (Some HTML editors such as Adobe PageMill 2.0 can also incorporate and play animated GIF images within an HTML page.) You can also use the plug-in to export a frame, title, or still image as a single (unanimated) GIF image.

Note: This plug-in is not supported by Adobe Premiere LE or by versions of Adobe Premiere earlier than 4.2.

INSTALLING THE PLUG-IN Copy the ﬁle “Animated GIF” into the “Adobe Premiere™ Plug-Ins” folder within the “Adobe Pre- miere 4.2” folder, and restart Adobe Premiere 4.2.

EXPORTING A MOVIE AS AN ANIMATED GIF The process of exporting a movie can vary depending on the nature of the source material and the kind of animated GIF you want to create. One of the most important distinctions is whether you export from the Construction window or from a Clip window. Exporting from the Construction window lets you include transition effects, cropping and motion effects, and so on, whereas exporting from the Clip window limits you to that clip itself. In the steps that follow, keep in mind that the window you export from changes the result of the export process.

To export a GIF from Premiere: 1 Create or open a movie in Adobe Premiere. 2 Prepare the source material for export, as follows:

• If you want to export from the Construction window, position the work bar so that it encom- passes the area you want to export.

• Set the In and Out points, and other markers if you want to use marked frames as described in step 8. If you export from the Construction window, Premiere uses the markers in the window’s timeline; if you export from a Clip window, Premiere uses the markers set within the Clip window.

ADOBE PREMIERE 4.2 FOR MACINTOSH 2 Using the Animated GIF plug-in

• Set the appropriate options in the Preview Options dialog box. Be sure that the frame rate set in the Preview Options is at least as fast as the animated GIF you want to create (the frames used by the Animated GIF plug-in are taken from the set of preview frames when you export from the Construction window). You can ignore the Audio settings; GIF is a graphics ﬁle format with no support for sound.

• If you want the GIF to include transparency (for example, so that an HTML page background shows through the transparent area), choose Compression from the Make menu, and from the Compressors pop-up menu choose a codec that supports an Alpha channel, such as None, Anima- tion, Planar RGB, or Cinepak. Then choose Millions of Colors+ from the colors pop-up menu. (These settings ensure that the Alpha channel—required for transparency—is exported with the GIF image.) Finally, determine the exact values of the color you want to be transparent (for example, the color’s RGB values or HLS values) so you can supply that information to the Animated GIF plug-in. 3 Select the window from which you want to export the GIF. You can export from the Construction window, a Clip window, or from a Sequence, Still Image, or Title window. Filmstrip ﬁles can be exported, but only from the Construction window.

4 Choose Export > Animated GIF from the File menu. The Save Animated GIF dialog box appears.

Note: When exporting from the Title or Still Image window, a simpliﬁed version of the dialog box opens since those windows can only export a single image GIF and not an animated GIF.

5 Select the Dithering option if you want the colors in the GIF to be dithered. If your source material is video rather than animation, dithering improves the visual quality of the GIF, but creates larger ﬁles. Do not select Dithering if your movie contains ﬂat colors.

ADOBE PREMIERE 4.2 FOR MACINTOSH 3 Using the Animated GIF plug-in

6 Select the color palette (also referred to as a Color Look-up Table, or CLUT) that you want to use to display the GIF:

• The Macintosh System palette is the 256-colors Macintosh operating system palette. Since the Windows system palette includes colors that are not in the Macintosh system palette, and vice versa, the colors you see in the exported GIF when viewed on the Macintosh will differ from those you see in the GIF when viewed on a Windows computer. Because the colors will be redithered by a Windows browser in order to approximate colors, the color shifts may be undesirable. (Choose Other from the Palettes pop-up menu if you’d like to use the Windows system palette, as described below).

• The Web Safe palette contains the 216 colors that both Macintosh and Windows system palettes have in common; these colors are therefore available to Web browsers on both the Windows and Macintosh platforms. As a result, the Web Safe palette gives you consistent colors regardless of which browser or which platform is used to view the exported GIF.

• The Optimized Web Safe palette is identical to the Web Safe palette with one exception: only the colors actually required to view the GIF are exported. This option keeps the GIF ﬁle size to a minimum (important for efﬁcient downloading over the Internet).

• Select Other if you want to attach an Adobe Photoshop-compatible palette file. You can use a custom palette of your own, or use one of the additional palettes included with the animated GIF plug-in. For more information on creating your own color palette files, refer to your Photoshop product documentation. To use one of the palettes provided with the plug-in, navigate to the Addi- tional Palettes folder to select from color or grayscale palettes of varying color depths (the lower the number of colors or shades, the smaller the file size of the animated GIF), or to select the 256-color Windows system palette if you are targeting the Windows platform. Next, click Open with the palette selected. 7 Specify a transparency setting as follows:

• Choose None if you don’t want transparent pixels in your GIF ﬁle.

• Choose Hard Edge to turn the speciﬁed color values transparent, leaving all other pixels opaque.

• Choose Soft Edge to turn the speciﬁed color values transparent and dither the surrounding pixels for a soft transition from opaque to transparent.

• If you chose Hard Edge or Soft Edge, click Color and use the Color picker that appears to specify the value of the color you want to be transparent. 8 From the Frame Rate pop-up menu, choose a frame rate, or select one of the three Marker options.

ADOBE PREMIERE 4.2 FOR MACINTOSH 4 Using the Animated GIF plug-in

• The relative frame rate options—the Same as Source Movie, Half, and Fifth options—refer to increments of the frame rate set in the Preview Options dialog box. For example, if you defined a preview frame rate of 30 fps, the Half and Fifth settings result in 15 fps and 6 fps respectively. Note: Since a higher frame rate results in larger file sizes (and therefore less efficient downloading over the Internet), specify the lowest frame rate suitable for the quality of the animation you want to achieve.

• The Markers—Same Timing option exports only the frames associated with a marker in the Construction or Clip window (the In and Out points are counted as markers), and sets the animated GIF to display the frames at the same time intervals as set in the Construction or Clip window. For example, if the clip’s In point is set at 00:00 and marker 1 is set at 02:00, then the exported GIF will display its second image two seconds after displaying the ﬁrst image.

• The Markers—1 fps option exports only the frames associated with a marker in the Construction or Clip window (the In and Out points are counted as markers), and sets the animated GIF to display the frames at one second intervals, rather than at the intervals between markers in the Construction or Clip window.

• The Marker 0—Single frame option exports only the frame at the 0 marker in the Construction or Clip window, so that a still-image GIF rather than an animated GIF is created. 9 Select Looping to replay the GIF repeatedly in the Web browser window. 10 Select Display Statistics if you want summary information about the exported GIF (including its ﬁle size and number of frames) to appear on screen once the export process is complete. 11 Type a name and select a location for the ﬁle, and click Save to begin the export process. If you want to cancel the export process, press Command + . (period). (If you chose to use a custom palette in step 5, press Command + . (period) twice to cancel the export process.)

To verify that the GIF you’ve exported suits your needs, switch to your Web browser and use its Open File feature to open the GIF you just exported. The browser plays the GIF in a new browser window. (If you did not check Looping in the Export Animated GIF dialog box, use the browser’s reload feature to replay an animated GIF.) It’s a good idea to preview your work in different Web browsers, to help you determine if the colors in the GIF and speed of the animation meet the quality standards you have in mind. Remember that most, but not all Web browsers support animated GIFs. For example Internet Explorer 3.0 and Netscape Navigator 3.0 do support animated GIFs, but the America Online browser version 3.0 does not support animated GIFs. If you want to preview the animated GIF embedded in one of your HTML pages, you can use Adobe PageMill 2.0 to add the GIF image to your page and to preview the animation in PageMill’s preview mode.

Adobe, PageMill, Photoshop, and Premiere are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated which may be registered in certain jurisdictions. Macintosh is trademark of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S.A. and other countries. Netscape and Netscape Navigator are trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation.The Graphic Interchange Format © is the copyright property of CompuServe Incorporated. GIF is a service mark property of CompuServe Incorporated. Windows, Windows 95 and Windows NT are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. QuickTime is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.