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How to improve the resolution of exported GIF? RRS feed

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    Unlike the animated GIF on Bing home page, the exported GIF files produced by Cliplets show poorly on the big screen.  I guess this is due to limited resolution or size of the exported files.  Is there a way to improve this?

    Regards,

    Nimit Phutirat

    Tuesday, April 15, 2014 6:01 PM

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    First, the facts:

    • We released two applications: first, "Cliplets" (a desktop app for Windows 7 and up); and more recently, "BLINK Cliplets" (a Windows 8 app available from the Windows Store)
    • BLINK Cliplets (the Windows 8 app available from the Windows Store) limits the output resolution of GIF files to a maximum of 500 pixels wide or tall, and limits MP4 and WMV videos to a maximum of 640 pixels wide or tall.
    • Cliplets (the desktop app for Windows 7 and up) limits GIF files to a maximum of 640 pixels wide or tall.  The 32-bit version of the desktop application also limit MP4 and WMV videos to a maximum of 640 pixels wide or tall, but the 64-bit version of the desktop app does not limit video resolution at all.

    Therefore, you can get higher resolution by exporting an MP4 video or WMV video from BLINK Cliplets (up to 640 pixels) instead of GIF.  Or you can switch to the 64-bit version of the desktop application, which can produce videos that match the resolution of your input video.

    (Note that we limit the resolution of GIF files because the GIF file format is very bad at storing video sequences.  GIF files were not designed to hold video, and the file size quickly gets out of hand if you want to store reasonable quality at high resolution.)

    Eric Stollnitz, Interactive Visual Media Group, Microsoft Research

    Friday, May 16, 2014 9:14 PM
    Moderator

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    First, the facts:

    • We released two applications: first, "Cliplets" (a desktop app for Windows 7 and up); and more recently, "BLINK Cliplets" (a Windows 8 app available from the Windows Store)
    • BLINK Cliplets (the Windows 8 app available from the Windows Store) limits the output resolution of GIF files to a maximum of 500 pixels wide or tall, and limits MP4 and WMV videos to a maximum of 640 pixels wide or tall.
    • Cliplets (the desktop app for Windows 7 and up) limits GIF files to a maximum of 640 pixels wide or tall.  The 32-bit version of the desktop application also limit MP4 and WMV videos to a maximum of 640 pixels wide or tall, but the 64-bit version of the desktop app does not limit video resolution at all.

    Therefore, you can get higher resolution by exporting an MP4 video or WMV video from BLINK Cliplets (up to 640 pixels) instead of GIF.  Or you can switch to the 64-bit version of the desktop application, which can produce videos that match the resolution of your input video.

    (Note that we limit the resolution of GIF files because the GIF file format is very bad at storing video sequences.  GIF files were not designed to hold video, and the file size quickly gets out of hand if you want to store reasonable quality at high resolution.)

    Eric Stollnitz, Interactive Visual Media Group, Microsoft Research

    Friday, May 16, 2014 9:14 PM
    Moderator
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    I have just started making cinemagraphs using Cliplets, and I was disappointed in the GIF quality, also. I tried some freeware/shareware MP4-to-GIF converters, but those were buggy and kept trying to download other stuff I didn't want.

    THEN, I thought about using Photoshop as a conversion tool. I was able to import the MP4, tweak some setting, and save it as animated GIF. This provided the best quality/flexibility, although you will never get the GIF to look as good as the actual video (color palette and all that).

    I won't try to explain the procedure. It's pretty simple. Just search for "mp4 to animated gif with photoshop"

    But as Eric said, file size becomes an issue ... 3M MP4 becomes 40M GIF!


    • Edited by RGHurst Sunday, October 4, 2015 11:03 AM
    Sunday, October 4, 2015 10:54 AM