Bug with adding a .gif image

[deleted]

If I generate a .gif image with a graphics package and add it to VP, the program adds it as a video clip of very short duration. (0:00:00.100) This means its duration cannot be altered. The Media info for this image is.......

and shows it IS an image not a video. This image should show with the default image duration which is set under Options as 10 seconds. The image in question is a simple vertical arrow that I was trying to animate over a clock face. I was puzzled at first when the animation (using rotation) kept failing and then I noticed VP had placed it in the Video Clip bin which it clearly isn't.

Can someone confirm this ?bug please? I should mention other .gifs produced with the same package are seen as images by VP.

Nat

borate

Successfully tested two .gif files from the Net. Both loaded to the VIDEO bin and displayed the requisite frames.

Length in VP varied, and was dependent upon structure of the .gif

[deleted]

Hi Borate

Thanks for the test. It's an odd one as to all other graphics packages it's an image. Indeed I have generated literally hundreds of .gifs to create animations that I use in talks. Checking on these, VP loads them correctly as images. This one should have been no different.

The aim of the exercise was to look at the difficulty if any, in creating a "countdown clock" of an arrow rotating around a dial. VP doesn't have one in the Title examples as all of these are digital representations using numbers. My immediate thought was to use a transparent .gif for the "hand" but the Draw package wouldn't set the background transparent. Nevertheless I used it anyway intending to make it transparent with Green Screen. But as VP "saw" it as a video it didn't work. Using the same draw image saved from the program as a .jpg it worked as expected.

I have to assume it's something connected with the Draw program. I'll delve a bit deeper.

Nat

[deleted]

Checking further (even testing extracted single images from animated gifs) It seems that VP will always see a single .gif image as a video file of duration 0.1 sec. Noting this, the exercise in question was easily set up using a green screened jpg for the clock "hand" set to Rotate in one version and 1 second snapshots of the "hand" in different positions in another.

(The separate problem of getting a transparent background in the .gif (even though it turned out unusable) was solved when I realized the DRAW program was preventing this as the jpeg of the clock face, used to determine the length of the hand was still present in one of the hidden background layers.)

Some users might find an analogue countdown stopwatch animation useful...

Nat