Creating an animation from a video on your computer is a fun way to share a looping clip of something fun, funny, or useful. They’re extremely popular on the Internet right now, and super easy to make with Animation Studio’s video conversion wizard. To get started, click the From Video toolbar button.
Select a Video to Convert
The first thing you see is a prompt to open your video and an empty box below it. This is where the preview of your video appears so you can make sure it’s the right one.
Click the Open button and choose a video file from your computer. You can open AVI, MPEG1, and WMV files. If the video file is valid, you’ll see the first frame of your video in the preview window.
You can preview the video by clicking the Play button. When you’re ready to move on, click Next.
Crop Your Video
Sometimes you don’t always want everything in the video to be in the animation. For example, black bars above and below the video can be removed by cropping. You can crop both horizontally and vertically using the sliders to the left and bottom of the preview.
To crop your video, check the box next to Crop captured frames. Then drag the sliders into position.
Cropping your video is a great way to reduce file size, removing anything that is unnecessary. For example, if you just want a small square of the video to animate, you can select it and end up with a tiny file size for your animation. Remember that you don’t need to crop your video. This is simply a convenient
tool to make your final animation look more professional, or to isolate specific parts of a video.
When you’re done cropping your video, or if you choose not to crop, click Next.
Select the Start/End Points of the Animation
There is a frame limit that depends on the width of your video, because file sizes can get huge quickly when you’re working with video. The average maximum length of a video is about 16–17 seconds. As a result, you’ll probably need to set the Start and End points of the section of video you want to isolate.
Move the sliders below the preview to set these start and end points, or enter the frame numbers in the boxes above the preview.
The box that says Capture every X frame(s) indicates the interval that will be used to capture your video. Selecting 1 means that every frame in the selected range will be captured; selecting 2 means that every other frame is captured; etc.
When your range is selected, click Next.
Build Your Animation!
The final step is to build your animation using the options you’ve selected. You can click the Back button to go back and adjust these options at any time, even after clicking the Build button.
If you don’t want the animation to loop forever, uncheck the box next to Loop continuously.
Now, click the Build button. When it’s done capturing every frame, you’ll see a preview of your video clip as an animation. To make changes, click the Back button. If it looks good, you’re done! Click the Finish button to import these frames into the Animation Studio workspace.
Congrats, you just created an animation from your own video! Now you just need to save the animation, and you’re ready to share it wherever you like.
