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GraphiteFingers
Inspiring
Sep 16, 2021 4:55 PM UTC
Question

export animated gif not collapsing redundant pixels across frames

An animation I did, starts with 16 frames of the exact same image.  Then, 10 frames of a fade to 50% dark.  Then 10 more frames of no change, etc.  I did it this way, because, apparently, an Adobe Animate GIF animation can have only one frame rate -- even though it's possible to set varying frame rates in an animated GIF.

 

When I export this as an Animated GIF the file size is rather large.  In my search for ways to reduce this file size I discovered that all those frames where nothing changes are NOT being optimized.  In other words, the Export utility is not collapsing these frames, to conserve file space [like another GIF Animation tool I occasionally use].  How did I determine this?  I tried chopping out, all but one frame, in each of the places in the animation, where nothing changes, and the files size shrank by a factor of 6!!

 

Am I missing some optimization setting, or is this just a limitation of the software?

 

Another thing I can do in this other GIF Animation program I own is: Set individual frame rates for frames in the animation.  There doesn't appear to be a way to do this in Adobe Animate.

 

Why don't I just use my other GIF Animator?  Because doing so would involve another tedious step: I would have to save the GIF from Animator, then load it into my other GIF Animator, and then delete the superfluous frames, then set a slower frame rate on the remaining frames.  It would be so much nicer of Animate did this.

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3 replies

Mario_CR
Community Expert
Community Expert
Sep 16, 2021 6:24 PM UTC

Yeah you can't do that in Animate, only in Photoshop. There's also a free online tool https://ezgif.com/ which is my preferred method.

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GraphiteFingers
Inspiring
Sep 16, 2021 9:25 PM UTC

Thank you.

And, doesn't it seem like Animate would be the more likely place for that kind of functionality to be?

[rhetorical]

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GraphiteFingers
Inspiring
Sep 16, 2021 5:13 PM UTC

UPDATE: I actually tried loading a file, created by Adobe Animate, into my other GIF Animator, and did what I discribed, above, and sure enough, the file size went from 2.31MB, to 461KB!  That's a 501% resuction in file size!! 

And, in case you don't want to have to re-read the above, to know what I did to get this MASSIVE reduction in file sze:

1. I loaded the GIF file into my other GIF Animator [a REALLY OLD program by JASC [defunct] called Animation Shop [because it's SUCH a good program!]

2. I deleted duplicate frames.

3. I calculated a new frame rate for each section that I deleted duplicate frames from.

4. I changed the frame rate of the remaining frames [that were once part of a redundant set].

5. Saved it as a new GIF file.

It looks exactly the same as the original Adobe Animate output, but it's 501% smaller!!

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