How to improve my dream animation

It has a brief interruption at end

from Stardock Forums

I made a dream from an animated GIF (saved as an HD AVI and then converted over to MPeG.  The video works fine when I set it to repeat play.  The trouble is that the file has a brief pause in the animation when the DREAM file rewinds (or whatever it is doing).

 

I would like a nice, smooth transition.  Any help on this?  I have plenty of tools and all the source images I need - and can create more as needed.

The animation is merely a ring of text that spins. the background is static (and I'd like to improve that as well, the conversion to a dream file greatly reduced the clarity of the BG).

I began with photoshop to produce the image at 20 degree rotation intervals.

I used ULEAD's Gif Animator to make the AVI file.

I did a standard conversion (maintaining the original HD resolution) to MPeG 2 [DVD format] so it would work in DreamMaker.

I used, as indicated, DreamMaker to finish out.

 

 

What might I have done to get better results?

deskscapes
4,117 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

There is some great advice in this thread. Maybe it will help.  LINK

Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top

The animation is merely a ring of text that spins. the background is static (and I'd like to improve that as well, the conversion to a dream file greatly reduced the clarity of the BG).
End of quote

If you have Adobe After Effects, simply put the ring of text into a new comp. with whatever bg you wanna use .... turn the text layer into a 3d layer, then go to "Transform > Rotation, click on the stopwatch for rotation ..... at the beginning of the comp. at 0 sec. let the value be 0 ... go to the end of the comp. and set the value to 1 rotation .... render the uncompressed .AVI and then you can convert it to .mpeg-2 !!

Also, with the rotating text you can have an animation as your bg, just by replacing your static bg layer

I hope this is helpful .... or if the image is yours, you can just email it to me and i'll do a Dream for you

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Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

As an alternative you might want to make it a hybrid dream.

If the source loops perfectly then this is probably the most ideal way to do it and the advantage is the background should remain high quality.

A Hybrid dream could be setup with the background as a png and than the animation converted into a NWA from a series of PNG files (one per frame - many animation tools can output in this form I believe)

Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Quoting Neil, reply 3
As an alternative you might want to make it a hybrid dream.
End of Neil's quote

 

Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top

You need to work with the highest resolution you can (1920x1080 is good) and keep that resolution through your entire process. If your final MPEG2 was DVD format, your final resolution ended up as 720x480, which makes for a poor quality dream.

Neil does mention a good option but from my experience with hybrid dreams, the final NWA will have a slight pause at the loop which I have not been able to eliminate. If the motion is slow enough, it's hardly noticeable.