Today I will teach you to insert a Video in a picture(which can be seen in any image viewer.) For example: 203 kb: http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/1579/animation11di.gif Many of you might be knowing how to do this but for those who don't this tutorial might be helpful. Well this can be done either by ADOBE IMAGEREADY or by JASC ANIMATION SHOP. I prefer the latter as it is much easier in that one. As you might have seen that these GIFs are of very large size so we sud try to making it small sized. To make such GIFs we need two things 1)The Background (picture) 2)A Video (Clip) (We'll be making a image dedicated to the WWE wrestler UNDERTAKER.) BACKGROUND: Try to keep a small sized picture cause even that could end up taking upto 200-400KB of your disk, when combined with the clip.As these type of animations are generally used as siggy, so large size may eat up ur bandwidth.In this example my background resolution is 300x100,which actually is quite large U can create background by using ur favorite photo-editor. TIP:If such pictures are dedicated to a Person/celebrity then GENREALLY we have his/her picture in the background along with Video(s). Rest Of Background tips will be after Step 12 VIDEO: 1)extract the desired portion from your video clip and save it somewhere. You can do it by VCD Cutter (http://www.softpile.com/Multimedia/Video/Review_04957_index.html) I've extracted this one. http://rapidshare.de/files/4141464/Untitled.WMV.html The Video sud be in either .mpg or .avi Animation shop doesn't support .wmv or DIV X filles. U can convert the files to .mpg/.avi using: (http://www.xilisoft.com/3gp-video-converter.html) 2)Open ANIMATION SHOP 3)Go to FILE-> OPEN. Open the file u've saved earlier. 4) Under the SAMPLING frame select "TAKE ONE SAMPLE FOR EVERY _ FRAMES" Change the value from 1 to 2 This means that from every 2 frames only one will be selected. This would reduce the file size by half without any loss in quality. Click OK 5)CROPPING THE VIDEO: As you can see in my video there are black borders. Obviously I don't want that. Choose "CROP" from Tool Pallete and select the desired portion. Then Click on "CROP". 6)As I told you earlier, the video should be small. Now go to ANIMATION->RESIZE ANIMATION 7) Under the Frame PIXEL SIZE select your desired resolution.As my background is 300x100 so I've chose 114x64. 8)Click OK! 9)Click VIEW ANIMATION on TOOLBAR to preview the animation. Notice that animation is moving real fast. To tackle this go to step 10 10)Press CTRL+A to select all frames. Or go to EDIT-> SELECT ALL. Select ARROW from Tool Pallete While every frame is selected right click on any frame. Go to Frame Properties. 11) Under the DISPLAY TIME tab Increase DISPLAY TIME a bit(about 1.5 times). I've increased it from 8 to 12. 12)Click OK. Now preview the animation as told in step 9 BACKGROUND cont'd: So before creating a background keep small things in mind: a)HOW MANY VIDEO CLIP(S) U WANT TO INCLUDE? As in the the example(at the start) there were two.In this current example I am using one video. so it'll be better keep we keep Undertaker's picture in the left and the clip in right. b)WHAT WILL BE RESOLUTION OF THE USED VIDEO Generally videos are of resolution 320:240, but as this is very large so we'll have to resize it to a desired resolution. As I am using 1 video so about half of background sud be covered. After cropping, I've resized the video to 114x64 c)DO YOU WANT FRAMES OR NOT Now that u've known the dimension of your animation, u can create a frame on your background accordingly. Area inside the frame sud be equal to the dimension of resized clip(here 114x64).With frames, the picture looks cool. For information on creating please refer to our PHOTOSHOP GURU. U know who he is,don't ya. No No.. he isn't MAHESH BABU. With above points in mind I've created this background: VIDEO cont'd: 14)See your Frame Count.It appears at the STATUS BAR at the bottom. Now Go to FILE-->>OPEN and Open the background file, that u've created. Select the Frame(of background file) And Copy it. Now Press SHIFT+CTRL+L to add same frame once. Continue Adding frames until the frame count of background reaches equal to the frame count of animation. In my case frame count is 53 15)Minimize the background file, and maximize the animation file. Press CTRL+A and select all frames. Go to EDIT->COPY 16)Minimize the animation file, and maximize the background file. Press CTRL+A and select all frames. 17)While every frame is selected, right click on the first frame. Go to PASTE->INTO SELECTED FRAME Position the animation as desired and click. 18)Preview the animation as told in step 9. Isn't t wonderful. 19)Save the file in GIF format. My Result: 262kb: http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/5346/taker8ln.gif