isimSoftware Gif Recorder
Make your screencasts in Gif, the file format supported on all devices
The Gif Screen Recorder and Animated Gif Editor are easy to use, professional tools to create screencasts in the animated gif format. Using the gif screen recorder you can record actions on your Windows desktop.
Personal License Price: 15$ – Click here to buy this software
No matter how accurate your texts are, explaining step by step, your audience will often remain thinking: ‘ok, but can you show me exactly how to do that, please?’. If they then can start a screen recording going through the exact moves, they will feel much obliged.
Impress your audience
Including animations make your presentation stand out. Gifs can simply be inserted as an image in a powerpoint presentation. On a web page you can add simple javascript code to start and stop the animation.
Gif and Audio
Gif files don’t include audio tracks, but you can make a separate sound file, for example MP3 or WAV. We show how with the help of javascript you can synchronize the start and stop of the Gif animation and combine gif with and audio file.
Gif recorder for Windows
The Gif recorder software can be used with Windows XP (SP3), VISTA, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10.
Gif animations are widely supported
Gif animations ‘just work’ on many devices and media:
PC, Phone, tablet, e-book
Websites, Social media
Powerpoint presentations, CHM Help files
Gif animations work when used in CHM help files, other video formats such as AVI and flash don’t.
Convert Gif to AVI to publish on YouTube
Low price, new versions free
USD 15, no yearly recurring costs.
Gif Animator features
The Gif Animator features of the Gif Recorder software are divided over its two programs, the Gif Screen Recorder and the Animated Gif Editor.
Gif Screen Recorder
The Gif Screen Recorder is an easy to use screen recorder making a screencast in the animated gif format.
By using the best available algorithm the recordings get near photo quality.
Only storing the differences during recording results in a maximally compressed gif with small file size.
Area presets simplify setting the correct recording area.
You can pause a recording to skip actions which are to be left out of the screencast.
Time lapse recording can be set allowing a longer time period to be represented by a small screencast resulting in smaller file size.
Use the Gif Recorder to convert a screencast (Flash, AVI, Mpeg,…) to the Gif format.
Gif Animator Editor
The Gif Animator Editor can be used to work on both screencasts and traditional manually created gif animations. The editor has many features of which the below are the most important.
Add subtitles to a gif animation – an important feature when making tutorials.
Add and edit images.
The ability to resize a gif.
Generate HTML pages with start and stop code. This gives the user control over when to start the Gif.
Add Javascript for combining the animated Gif with an audio file.
Convert to AVI for publication on YouTube.
How to use the Gif Screen Recorder
This desktop recorder makes it extremely easy to create screen video captures. The screencasts are stored as Gif files which can be played on nearly any computer or mobile device and can be included in blogs, websites, powerpoint presentations and help files. Using this PC screen recorder you can record any activity on your desktop. Maybe you want to show how to do certain things with a program. Or make an animation of a movie you made with your mobile or some other source (YouTube) you want to use on your website or social media.
Note
Special techniques are built-in to keep the size of the gif files that store the video screen captures reasonable size. The size is determined by the size of the screen area being recorded,
the duration of the recording, the image quality selected. Lowest quality (64 colors or lower) recording may be a factor 3 smaller as compared to photo quality, the number of frames per second (FPS),
the amount of change between between subsequent images in the screencast.
Screencasts showing user activity such as on-line tutorials are surprisingly small.
The file size of recorded films such as made on your smart phone or picked up from YouTube will quickly become large. For example 10 seconds YouTube film can easily amount to several Mb file size. Given the above. and the fact that photo films are characterised by high level of change between subsequent images you are advised to keep them short and not have large areas.
You can further reduce the gif file size by removing images frames using the Animated Gif Editor. See also: How to keep file size of recording reasonable
Prepare what you want to record, e.g. start the program whose behaviour you want to record.
Start the Gif Screen Recorder program (Start > Gif Recorder > Gif Screen Recorder).
all recording buttonsA large red rectangle appears in the center of the screen with top left buttons for Start, Stop, size recording, etcetera. Initially, the recorder wil set the area to the active application window.
Make the recording area match what you want to record. When you want another area to be recorded, you can drag the titlebar to another application window which the capture area will automatically match. Alternatively, you can drag the red borders to set the exact area to record.
Note
the size of the recording area is given next to the buttonsize button (width x height in pixels).
Preset sizes can be selected from the combo box but you can also drag the borders for this.
select quality buttonIf you are filming a photo recording, maybe made on your smartphone or on YouTube, switching to Photo Quality (top right of recording area) will give a much better result. The downside is that the encoding of the recording into a gif file takes much more time. A 10 seconds recording can take several minutes to encode. Still, for publising this extra time will certainly be worth it giving you a high quality animated gif. Choosing fewer colors makes the gif smaller – at the cost of the visual quality.
time laps recordingIf you want to limite the file size of a long recording, you can select a frames per second (FPS) on the top right corner. See also How to make a time lapse animation. 20 FPS gives a fluent film, but 10 FPS is sufficient for many purposes and results in smaller GIF size. If you target the Safari browser 15 may be best because it may degrade images with FPS lager than 10.
Start Recording (using start recording button button or PrtScn key).
Demonstrate whatever – here I’m demonstrating recording, so apart from that I show nothing interesting.
If during the recording you are not satisfied with what you are doing, press the Restart button, the fastest way to have another shot at the recording.
Stop the Recorder (using stop recording button button or Esc key).
Save the recording. After saving you can choose to opens the recording in the Animated Gif Editor.for editing.
Tips
Use the pause recording button pause button or Pause key to suspend recording. To continue recording press recording button continue button or PrtScn key again.
During recording or pause you can drag borders to reposition the recorded area.
Area presets listed in the combo are stored in system folder C:\Users[username]\AppData\Roaming\Gif Recorder\areapresets.txt. You can change the list to make it more suitable for you. If you can’t find that folder, change windows system folders setting to ‘visible’.
Make Animated Gifs using the Recorder and Editor
How to use the Animated Gif Editor / Gif Animator
The Gif Recorder software has many unique features that help you make screen recordings and animations in the gif format.
Gif Screen Recorder: record anything happening on your screen saving it to a gif file.
Use the Gif Recorder as animated gif converter
Add subtitles to your animated gif
Make HTML page with Gif Start & Stop
Make HTML page with Gif and Audio
Resize gif animation
Convert Gif to AVI to publish on YouTube
The below recording walks through the Animated Gif Editor / Gif Animator application. Below it is a detailed reference.
The Animated Gif Editor provides you with all tools needed to prepare your animated gifs for publishing. The editor consists essenially of four areas: Image List (left), Image Pane, Toolbar and Status bar.
Toolbar
The toolbar is the area most actions of the editor start from:
New, Open or Record Gif Animation
Switch between Gif animation and Image view
Add new images
Remove images
Edit image using MS Paint
Add subtitles to your animated gif
Set Gif Repetitions
Export image frames
Image List
The image (frame) list has four columns:
Time: indicates after how many seconds of running the film the image appears. You will use it’s value when you add subtitles to your animated gif to determine the correct start time for a given subtitle.
Delay: the amount of time in seconds a frame is displayed before it moves to the next.
Disposal: what to do with the current image being displayed when moving to the next.
This column is hidden by default as in most cases you will have no reason to work with it.
Subtitle: This column only appears if you add subtitles to your animated gif.
The shortcut menu (right-click) gives access to an additional set of actions:
Change Delay
Change or View Disposal Method
Move image in list
Image Pane
The Image Pane shows either the animation or the last image you clicked on. See also: Switch between Gif animation and Image view.
Status bar
progress meter appearing when actions take some time Opening, saving and recalculating an animated gif are actions that may take some time to finish, especially with larger images. The progress meter gives feedback on what part of the job was done and how much still needs to be done. It is located in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.
Make Animated Gifs using the Recorder and Editor