I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on software (preferably FREEWARE) that could create a .gif animation directly from a short movie file, such as mpeg, avi, wmv etc?

It's something I'd like to mess around with... I suppose it would be possible to do it yourself by making screen captures of a few successive frames, but is there any software that would do it automatically?

I was hoping to create something like this

Any advice appreciated!

I don't know of any free software that will do that. 

I'm using Ulead Gif animator, and it will do what you want, but I don't think it's the best animation software out there.

If I didn't have this software, I'd use IrfanView to automatically make the screen captures (Options - Extract all frames) then delete the frames I didn't want, and use a free program like UnFREEz to make the gif.

Thanks a lot for the advice KS, I'd read about Ulead Gif Animator being able to do this after searching on google. I'll try the IrfanView method you described, doesn't sound too difficult. Cheers, much appreciated 

Hi KS,

Just noticed your post about Irfan View - im trying to get a program to take screencaps from vids and decided to try Irfanview but the only prob is that it doesnt seem to do wmv files . . . any ideas?

thanks!

Not sure why it doesn't work with wmv's (I also tried it)

What I'd do is convert the file to a mpg / avi and then use IrfanView.  There are several free "trial" programs here that should do that for you.

KS