How to NOT loop an animated GIF

[anastasi5]

I just want my quickie GIF to fly in the text and play once as a web banner.  Is that possible in GIF format?  How else should I save it?

[Rick Gerard]

If you want to create an animated GIF in AE the best thing to do is create a comp that has no duplicate frames, export the file using the Render Cue and the Output Module Lossless preset, open the rendered movie in Photoshop and set the timing of each frame, then use the legacy Export for Web feature from the menu. If you do not want the GIF to loop then make sure that option is not selected.

In your example you could have the first frame of the airplane sitting on the runway last for 2 seconds, then use 20 frames to have the airplane take off, then end the animation. That could give you an 8 to 10-second animated gif that only has 21 frames. 

[anastasi5]

That seems to be the consensus around here...  Using the Photoshop features to fine-tune the creation in AfterEffects...  

Is there any other preset to export a simply animated web banner?

[Mike_Abbott]

If you're producing any more than a handful a year you might want to look at:

https://aescripts.com/gifgun/

Generally considered to be the tool for producing animated gifs directly from AE.

[Rick Gerard]

No matter what tool you choose to use inside After Effects you won't have nearly as much control over animated gifs as you get in Photoshop. Even with Gif Gun, I would never use After Effects as my only tool for creating that kind of web graphic because you cannot set individual frame durations in After Effects and you have almost no control of how the color will be converted from 8 bits per channel to 8 bits in total.