f13.net

Can anyone point me to some decent capturing utilities for making gifs from .avis, .mpgs, etc.? I use Gif Construction Set to make my gifs, but I'd really prefer to not slam the screen cap key to make the gifs. Thanks.

Microsoft's GIF Animator can make them from AVIs. It's crude by today's standard but it's free.

Then uhm...what's not free and not crude? I like torturing people. I'm willing to pay for annoying avatars.

I haven't used any of them but you can Google on

"Animated GIFs" AVI

for a selection of them.

Jasc Paintshop has an animated gif maker called "Animation Shop."  I'm not at home so I can't check if it converts AVIs, though.. it's been a long time since I messed with it.  It was a nice little program, though.

Yea, checking google is easy. But I'd prefer some sort of recommendation from you folks. If I can't leech knowledge from a userbase of geeks, what good are you all? Dance, my pretties.

Hm.. looks like Corel bought Jasc.  They don't offer a free trial on Animation shop, but they offer a 30-day money-back and Animation shop is only $39.  (I liked their Paintshop Pro program because it only cost $99 and was a great replacement for Photoshop for a non-professional like me, not sure how it stacks professionally.)

Link (http://store.corel.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?promocode=0&storeId=10001&currency=USD&jspStoreDir=CorelUS&partNumber=OL_ANIMSHOP3&catalogId=10103&ddkey=SetCurrencyPreference)

I use AVD Video Processor.  It's got a number of very annoying quirks (like not being able to load an existing GIF, so if you want to edit a GIF you have to convert it to an AVI first), but it's a lot cheaper than anything Adobe makes.