# Exporting animated gifs

**URL:** <https://openrndr.discourse.group/t/exporting-animated-gifs/134>\
**Category:** Tutorials\
**Created:** [July 8, 2020, 5:17pm UTC](https://openrndr.discourse.group/t/exporting-animated-gifs/134 "2020-07-08T17:17:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![abe](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/openrndr.discourse.group/abe/32/700_2.png) [@abe](https://openrndr.discourse.group/u/abe)\
**Post date:** [July 8, 2020, 5:17pm UTC](https://openrndr.discourse.group/t/exporting-animated-gifs/134/1 "2020-07-08T17:17:57Z")

</div>

Animated gifs are old and inefficient, but in some places it’s the only format you can upload.

It’s easy to use the ffmpeg video writer from OPENRNDR to produce such files. Here a template:

> **Imports**
>
> ```auto
> import org.openrndr.application
> import org.openrndr.draw.isolatedWithTarget
> import org.openrndr.draw.renderTarget
> import org.openrndr.ffmpeg.VideoWriter
> import org.openrndr.ffmpeg.VideoWriterProfile
> import java.lang.Math.toDegrees
> import kotlin.math.PI
> 
> ```

```auto
fun main() = application {
    configure {
        width = 512
        height = 512
    }
    program {
        val videoWriter = VideoWriter.create().apply {
            size(width, height)
            profile(GIFProfile())
            output("/tmp/my_anim.gif")
            start()
        }

        val videoTarget = renderTarget(width, height) {
            colorBuffer()
            depthBuffer()
        }

        val totalFrames = 120

        extend {
            val norm = (frameCount % totalFrames) / totalFrames.toDouble() // cycles 0.0 .. 1.0
            val radians = 2 * PI * norm // cycles 0.0 .. TWO_PI
            val angle = toDegrees(radians) // cycles 0.0 .. 360.0
            drawer.isolatedWithTarget(videoTarget) {
                // Draw stuff here.
                // You can use one of the three variables above
                // to produce looping animations.
            }

            videoWriter.frame(videoTarget.colorBuffer(0))
            drawer.image(videoTarget.colorBuffer(0))

            if (frameCount == totalFrames) {
                videoWriter.stop()
                application.exit()
            }
        }
    }

}

class GIFProfile : VideoWriterProfile() {
    override fun arguments(): Array<String> {
        return arrayOf("-vf", "split[s0][s1];[s0]palettegen[p];[s1][p]paletteuse=dither=none:diff_mode=rectangle")
    }
}

```

The simple GIFProfile optimizes the colors and disables the dithering. With dithering I was getting very heavy files. Once the file is exported, I run this command to optimize the file further:

```auto
gifsicle --loop --delay=2 --colors 16 --optimize=2 my_anim.gif >my_anim_optimized.gif

```

Delay 2 gives about 60 fps I think. I try to reduce the colors as much as possible, depending on what I’m drawing. You can read more about [gifsicle](http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/).

Do you have any tricks to make gif loops?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![edwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/73ab20/32.png) [@edwin](https://openrndr.discourse.group/u/edwin)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2020, 5:23pm UTC](https://openrndr.discourse.group/t/exporting-animated-gifs/134/2 "2020-07-10T17:23:19Z")

</div>

This is going to be a bit easier in the next version. The functionality can be previewed by updating `build.gradle.kts`: upgrade to OPENRNDR 0.3.44-rc.1 and ORX 0.3.53-rc.1 and add `"orx-video-profiles"` to the list of extensions.

demo:

> <https://github.com/openrndr/orx/blob/master/orx-jvm/orx-video-profiles/src/demo/kotlin/DemoGIF01.kt>

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![abe](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/openrndr.discourse.group/abe/32/700_2.png) [@abe](https://openrndr.discourse.group/u/abe)\
**Post date:** [January 3, 2023, 8:26am UTC](https://openrndr.discourse.group/t/exporting-animated-gifs/134/3 "2023-01-03T08:26:34Z")

</div>

It became [even simpler](https://github.com/openrndr/orx/tree/master/orx-jvm/orx-video-profiles) last year 🙂