Optimizing Animations

Optimization of the output file containing your animation is a very important process, especially when placing animations on the Internet. This is because the size of the file directly influences the speed for transferring the animation, and thus how soon it will be displayed in a browser. Since large banners can contain dozens of kilobytes, it is important to make the output file as small as possible.

If the program determines that optimization will not produce the intended effect - that it will not reduce file size - it will suggest canceling the optimization process. You can also see the size of the output animation file and the estimated amount of time needed to download it at various connection speeds.

Zoner GIF Animator 5 provides these options for fine-tuning the optimization process:

Creating a global palette - You can create a global palette for the whole file instead of multiple local palettes.

Dithering frames - all colors that are not contained in the global palette are dithered (i.e. replaced by a mosaic of those colors available in the global palette).

Removing extra pixel - crops the individual frames so as to remove all areas that do not appear during the animation (i.e. that extend beyond the animation space).

Removing titles and comments - this removes the text comments that were saved with the output file; it does not affect the animation as displayed.

Using the "difference method" - the contents of all frames are adjusted so that each frame in the animation contains only changes relative to the previous state, with the remaining pixels of the new frame being replaced with the transparent color.

Removing special features - this converts vector graphics, TrueColor bitmaps, simulated controls into the ordinary bitmaps in aGIF frames.

The Difference Method in Practice:

An animation made up of four frames:

The frames without optimization
(overall animation size: 9,877 bytes):

The same frames after optimization in Zoner GIF Animator 5
(overall animation size: 3,671 bytes):