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Best way to animate an image?

Processing Deep Sky Supernova M101 Messier Objects
14 replies•544 views
Dale Penkala avatar
Dale Penkala avatar
Hello all,
I’ve never really gotten into this animation thing but I have recently imaged M101 https://www.astrobin.com/p1eu5z/ before the “new” Super Nova” discovery. I was out last night and captured another 2hrs of data and I can clearly see this SN. I’d like to show it in comparison to the other data that I captured several days ago that does NOT have it in there. I guess really it’s a “Blink” between 2 images. 

My question is how do you guys that do this so well do this? What software are you using and or technique? I use PI for processing/post processing and I also have Gimp. I do not have PS.

Any help or guidance in this particular area would be greatly appreciated. I searched YT and really didn’t find exacly what I wanted to do so this is why I’m reaching out to you animation guys.

Thanks!
Dale
Respectful Engaging
Alex Woronow avatar
Alex Woronow avatar
I use an online (there are many) animated Gif maker. Very simple.
a
Dale Penkala avatar
Dale Penkala avatar
Alex Woronow:
I use an online (there are many) animated Gif maker. Very simple.
a

Any suggestions as to which ones?

Dale
Alex Woronow avatar
Alex Woronow avatar
https://ezgif.com/maker  works well for me
a
Dale Penkala avatar
Dale Penkala avatar
Alex Woronow:
https://ezgif.com/maker  works well for me
a

Thank you I’ll give it a try!

Dale
D. Jung avatar
D. Jung avatar
I use ffmpeg. You can set resolution, frame rate and pretty much everything else. And it supports videos or images as input.
Dale Penkala avatar
Dale Penkala avatar
D. Jung:
I use ffmpeg. You can set resolution, frame rate and pretty much everything else. And it supports videos or images as input.

Is this a stand-alone program or does it integrate with PI?

Dale
D. Jung avatar
D. Jung avatar
Ffmpeg is a standalone tool. In fact, you can use the blink tool in PI to export to gif/video but it requires that you have ffmpeg installed. You can Google to find examples how to use it, it's unfortunately just command line.

https://superuser.com/questions/556029/how-do-i-convert-a-video-to-gif-using-ffmpeg-with-reasonable-quality
Dale Penkala avatar
Dale Penkala avatar
D. Jung:
Ffmpeg is a standalone tool. In fact, you can use the blink tool in PI to export to gif/video but it requires that you have ffmpeg installed. You can Google to find examples how to use it, it's unfortunately just command line.

https://superuser.com/questions/556029/how-do-i-convert-a-video-to-gif-using-ffmpeg-with-reasonable-quality

Thank you for this information. I’ll check things out on this!

Dale
Well Written
Dale Penkala avatar
Dale Penkala avatar
I was able to do what I wanted so thank you everyone. Its not the greatest but is shows the SN for sure.

Dale
Abdul Thomas Jnr avatar
Abdul Thomas Jnr avatar
Dale Penkala:
I was able to do what I wanted so thank you everyone. Its not the greatest but is shows the SN for sure.

Dale

*** Hi Dale,what did you use to make the animation? I want to do something similar***
Dale Penkala avatar
Dale Penkala avatar
Dale Penkala:
I was able to do what I wanted so thank you everyone. Its not the greatest but is shows the SN for sure.

Dale

*** Hi Dale,what did you use to make the animation? I want to do something similar***

Hello Abdul,
I used the website at the link that @Alex Woronow provided but here it is: https://ezgif.com/maker He is right its very easy to use.

Dale
Abdul Thomas Jnr avatar
Abdul Thomas Jnr avatar
Okay thank you 😊
Rob Johnson avatar
Rob Johnson avatar
I use Screen To GIF which is a very simple but powerful standalone app, exports in a number of formats, great if you have quite a few images and maybe don’t use PixInsight.
Dale Penkala avatar
Dale Penkala avatar
Rob Johnson:
I use Screen To GIF which is a very simple but powerful standalone app, exports in a number of formats, great if you have quite a few images and maybe don’t use PixInsight.

Thank you for this info!

Dale