GIF export plugin

The GIF export plugin for Pro Motion
This plugin lets you save your animation to GIF89a files that can be used within HTML documents or similar.
It will only work if you have the free software Microsoft GIF Animator installed. This program is needed to create the GIF file!!! So if you don't have it already please download and install it properly (it's a setup package).
You may ask why you need the Microsoft Animator to use the plugin...
The compression scheme (called LZW-compression) that is used within GIF files is patented. The patend owner is a company called UNISYS. Almost all compression schemes are patended. But UNISYS seems to be the only company that forces software authors using this compression to sign a licensing contract where you have to pay a certain amount of money (royalties) to UNISYS even if the software you produce is freeware. This amount is not much if you sell your product, but you can't pay for it if you are creating freeware. Also, UNISYS does not give a license to every software author. They sometimes refuse to license certain software packages and thus i decided to get arround this by using the Microsoft GIF Animator for export purposes. Microsoft has a general license to use LZW-compression and thus it is legal to use this software. And the best: it's free

How it works
The plugin that you have started offers certain settings which will be described below. The most important setting is the location of the Microsoft GIF Animator. Please select the correct executable before starting any GIF export.
To start the export you have to click on the "Save animated GIF" button. Then the Microsoft GIF Animator will be started and the image data is transfered to it. This is done by transfering each single image to the clipboard and by simulating mouse and keyboard input to import the clipboard from the animator side and to set up the different edit fields within the animator.

CAUTION:
DO NOT MOVE YOUR MOUSE WHILE THE PLUGIN IS EXPORTING IMAGE DATA TO THE MICROSOFT ANIMATOR!!!

Because the mouse and keyboard events are simulated, they can be influenced by true mouse movements or keystrokes. If you for example move your mouse to another window just before the plugin creates a "mouse button click" then it may start a function of another software. So in worst case a "delete" button of another software could be clicked and some of your work could get lost.
Let the plugin finish its communication with the animator or interrupt it by holding the "ESC" key until the mouse movement stops. But don't hit other keys and don't move your mouse!
After the plugin has finished the data transfer, it will automatically open the save dialog of the GIF Animator and you can save the file.
You can also cancel this to manually set certain options within the animator and to save the file afterwards. You could for example add a "comment" that is saved with the GIF file.
Please have a look at the Microsoft GIF Animator documentation for further informations.
You must close the GIF Animator before you can close the plugin to return to Pro Motion!

The settings/controls

UPPER SCROLLBAR
is used to select a certain frame where you want to change frame specific values such as the "delay".

REMOVE IMAGE BY
chooses the method an image will be removed from screen before the next image of the animation is displayed (used for each frame individually!).
possible values are:

nothing/leave as is will not remove the image before the next one is displayed
background color will remove the image by filling it with the background color
restore last image will remove the image by rebuilding the previous one

DELAY
selects the delay that is used before the next frame is displayed (1/100th of a second)

LOOP GIF-ANIMATION
selects how often the animation will be played as loop. 30000= inifite.

TRANSPARENT COLOR
the color which is transparent within the GIF animation (used for all frames)

BEST CROP
the plugin automatically scans for changes between two frames and reduces the imagesize accordingly to a minimum

OPTIMIZE COLORS
scans each single image for the maximum colors used and reduces the color depth to save disk space

INTERNAL DELAY
this delay value (milliseconds) is used between each mouse or keyboard simulation step. This might be useful if you
have a slower computer system. Then you can increase this value i.e. to "50"or "100". Check different values until it works correctly.

The "A"-buttons set the value that it belongs to for all frames. If you want to use a transparent color within an animation use as the REMOVE IMAGE BY method: "background color" for all frames! This is most important because the next image is drawn over the old one and where the new image is transparent the old image would be partly visible leading to error effects.

Normally you do not need to modify any settings when saving an animated GIF file if you don't need transparency. Just hit the "Save animated GIF" button.
Keep in mind that web-browsers often display GIFs with a lower speed. So i recommend to save the animation and to check it out with your favorite browser. Don't close the plugin! Change the speed values or other things within the GIF Animator, save it again and refresh your web-browser.

How to optimize GIF file sizes
The plugin options "Best Crop" and "Optimize Colors" will help to reduce the sizes of GIF files by reorganizing palette and image data.
To optimize the file size of a GIF animation you should try to reduce the number of colors used by your animation. Pro Motion offers two functions to do this "Reduce Colors" and "Single Palette". These functions can be found in the "Colors" menu.
Both are able to reduce the number of colors used by the animation frames and they can use dithering to keep the image quality. "Reduce Colors" creates a separate optimized palette for each frame. This is already a good optimization, but if possible use "Single Palette". This function will create an optimized palette that is used by all frames and this will lead to much smaller GIF files if you don't use dithering.

Bugreports
If you encounter any bugs please write to Jan Zimermann.

Special thanks
Special thanks and greetings are going to:

Hiroaki Bando (Japan) for doing beta testing on Japanese systems.