Animated GIF--Loop Just Once?

Dec 12, 2012

Bob Wiker
By Bob Wiker

I created an animated GIF in Adobe Fireworks. It's a gauge with a needle that moves from the 6 o'clock position to the 12 o'clock position, using 16 frames ('states' in Fireworks parlance). I set the animation to run just ONCE; the needle rotates from 6 o'clock and stops at 12 o'clock. I tested the animated GIF in my Web browser and it works as expected.

When I insert the animated GIF onto a Storyline slide, however, the animation loops forever. It loops in Preview mode and also when I publish to Web (HTML) output.

Does Storyline recognize and respect the 'looping' setting contained within an animated GIF file?

81 Replies
Sarah Wilson
11 months ago06/12/23 at 4:43 pm (UTC)

In case anybody is looking for a way around this,

I had a gif, but I needed the animation for one element. I looked at it from a layer's perspective and saved the one image without the element, then added the element separately to Storyline, and then added animations to it. 

It's not as neat an animation as original, but that was the only way I thought it could work.

Hope it helps.

Jose Tansengco
8 months ago09/06/23 at 2:15 pm (UTC)

Hi Rosaria, 

We don't have any new updates to share on this feature, but I may have a workaround that you can use. 

You can add a state to your GIF file of a JPEG version of your animated image and then just change the state of the object to this custom state once a full 'cycle' of the animation completes. This will make it look like the animation has stopped for the GIF file. I've attached a sample project file so you can see how this can be done. 

I used Microsoft Paint to convert the GIF to JPEG while retaining the image's exact resolution.

Let me know if you have any questions!

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