What tools are some of you using, including Michael G, to create the animated GIFs for showing people process steps in MoI?

That would come in very handy as a tool for myself when I have questions. I can post my messed up process and that might help communicate the issue better than non-animated screen grabs.

I could also use it outside of the MoI boards too.

mshideler

you can search on google for "camtasia"

Hi mshideler, yup I use Camtasia (http://www.techsmith.com/) for the animated GIFs and also for the WMV video tutorials here: http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/tutorials.htm

For static screen shots I usually take those using Paint Shop Pro.

- Michael

thank you both for the tips.

Camtasia is a bit costly for my wallet (student & working for a start-up for no pay = poor)

I did finally find something for $39, CaptureWiz Pro.

It will do what I need - animated gifs, mini movies, etc.

If I need a higher quality tool, Camtasia looks great.

Hi mjs,

Sound a good alternative, will try it...
Thanks

"""""""Camtasia is a bit costly for my wallet (student & working for a start-up for no pay = poor)""""""""

TechSmith also offers a free version... Jing!

Hi mshideler,

There's also CamStudio that's available for FREE.

http://camstudio.org/

HTH, Colin

great suggestions, but I don't see the GIF export option.

I think the $39 one is going to work.

At this point I don't trust most video (AVI, MP*, MPEG, etc) since there are so many different codecs out there. Seems like there is always some stupid video that someone cannot watch because they don't have the right codec on their machine and finding the right ones does not always happen.

Soundless gifs I think are perfect for my needs.

Yeah animated GIFs are pretty much the most universal since all web browsers are able to show them directly.

The main thing that is a pain with them is that they can only contain 256 colors, so they usually need to be color reduced from your original screen and you can get some speckly dot pattern stuff because of that.

They can also get to be kind of large if you try to have a very long one, say longer than 10 seconds or so. If you get much past that you're kind of getting more into video file territory. In Camtasia you can adjust the frame rate for how many frames the GIF will be showing per second and reducing that makes for more steppy kind of motion but reduces file size a lot.

- Michael