Carl Johansen
05-13-2007, 09:27 PM
Hello,
I am kind of new to graphics but I am writing an application that produces
'movies' (for lack of a better word). The concept is similar to Terminator
2-style morphing where the pixels in one image are rearranged over a
sequence of frames to create a new image. These animations are not really
intended for websites; they would be more like novelty greeting cards. I am
trying to figure out which file format I should use and so far the winner is
animated GIF. The pros are:
* widely portable (this is a big one because I want users to be able to send
movies to their friends, who should be able to view them quickly and easily
with no extra software)
* easy to produce
* lossless
* no patent problems anymore!
The cons that I can see are:
* 256 colour limit
* files are pretty big (can be two to four MB for a typical animation)
* playback speed and smoothness seem to depend on the viewer software (eg I
get different results between IE, Windows Picture Viewer and whatever it is
that the .NET WinForms PictureBox control uses)
* old and crusty (or is that Tried and True?)
Is ani GIF the way to go, or should I use MNG, Flash or Brand X? Thanks
very much in advance for any comments you have.
Carl
I am kind of new to graphics but I am writing an application that produces
'movies' (for lack of a better word). The concept is similar to Terminator
2-style morphing where the pixels in one image are rearranged over a
sequence of frames to create a new image. These animations are not really
intended for websites; they would be more like novelty greeting cards. I am
trying to figure out which file format I should use and so far the winner is
animated GIF. The pros are:
* widely portable (this is a big one because I want users to be able to send
movies to their friends, who should be able to view them quickly and easily
with no extra software)
* easy to produce
* lossless
* no patent problems anymore!
The cons that I can see are:
* 256 colour limit
* files are pretty big (can be two to four MB for a typical animation)
* playback speed and smoothness seem to depend on the viewer software (eg I
get different results between IE, Windows Picture Viewer and whatever it is
that the .NET WinForms PictureBox control uses)
* old and crusty (or is that Tried and True?)
Is ani GIF the way to go, or should I use MNG, Flash or Brand X? Thanks
very much in advance for any comments you have.
Carl