Animated GIF--Loop Just Once?

Hi Bob. Welcome to E-Learning Heroes!

I'm not an Adobe expert, but I would think you would be able to edit the "looping" option for the gif image in the original software (Fireworks). Articulate wouldn't control looping of the image, to my knowledge.

I played around with this a little bit and came up with a workaround for you, hopefully it'll help.

If you'd like to see the example I created, you can see the published version here. I've also attached the file to this thread, if you'd like to see how I created this. Please keep in mind it's a very simple example, nothing fancy

I took a screenshot of the image in the position that I considered "finished" and put it behind the animated gif at the end of the time specified for the image. So, you could use the same technique and put in an image of the needle at the 12 o'clock mark.

I know this probably isn't the only way to do this and may not even be the best method, but hopefully it will help until you're able to find a better work around.

Good luck with the project!

Christine

Thanks for taking a look at this. Yes, there is a mechanism in Fireworks for setting the number of loops in an animation. This screenshot shows the Fireworks States panel for my 18-state animation; the Looping drop down menu is set for 'No Looping'. With this setting, the animated GIF that I export from Fireworks will play all 18 'states' once and then stop at the last state.

It appears that Storyline is NOT recognizing the looping setting in the animated GIF file. My Web browser runs the animated GIF properly (one cycle of the animation) but Storyline Web output does not (endless cycles of the animation).

The workaround you mocked up does indeed yield the result I'm seeking, though it's a bit of struggle to set the timing just right so that the animation goes off-screen at exactly the right time--not too soon, not so late that it begins to loop again. This is the workaround I tried before asking the question here in the forum. Great minds think alike!  

Might be helpful to find out for sure whether Storyline recognizes the looping setting in an animated GIF so that others will know (or as a feature request for the next Storyline update). Either way, I'll live with this workaround on my current project.

Thanks again for researching.

Hi Bob!

I totally agree, I think it would be pretty useful. For now, you might want to submit that feature request you mentioned earlier. We love getting feedback and we take suggestions pretty seriously

Also, just wanted to say that I really like the look of the gauge you created. I bet it looks great in your project!

Thanks, Bob. I hope you have a great day!

Christine

One "trick" that might help is to set the duration of the final frame in the animated GIF to a large number. That way, it is easier to set the duration of the animated GIF in the Storyline timeline to stop/end exactly where and when you want.

Animated GIF frame durations are set in 1/100ths of a second increments. So, you might set it up like this in your animated GIF authoring tool (such as Adobe Fireworks):

frame 1----15/100ths

frame 2----15/100ths

etc.

frame 27----15/100ths

frame 28----500/100ths

In this example, each frame of the animated GIF displays for 15/100ths of a second except for the final frame, which displays for 5 full seconds (500/100=5). Add your animated GIF to the Storyline timeline, then drag its bar to shorten it so that it ends anywhere within the final 5 seconds of the animation (i.e., the final frame of your animated GIF).

This is an excellent workaround, Bob. Thanks for this. 

I realise this forum thread is 2 years old, and that feature request you submitted has not yet been addressed. 

I will submit a feature request now also, and hopefully the next update to Storyline will be able to recognise the loop setting in an animated GIF. This would save a lot of mucking around.  

Thanks Kuriko for submitting the feature request. Generally the updates have dealt with bug fixes or other elements, and the new version of Storyline would deal with feature requests and new elements being added. You can see the listing of all our updates and fixes here, and we're currently on Storyline Ver 1, Update 6 Build 1407.2208.

Hi all - I've just imported an animated GIF into SL2, and it's not recognising  the loop setting - i.e. my design colleague set it to only play once, but SL2 is looping it. Any ideas other than the workaround above, which I have in my back pocket if all else fails?

Thanks

Nope. Doesn't appear that Storyline 2 was fixed to recognize/honor the looping setting of animated GIFs. Best bet still seems to be setting the final frame of the GIF animation to a large value (like 5 seconds), then setting Storyline to take the animated GIF off the screen anytime during that final 5-second frame.

Hi Anne,

As Bob mentioned, this is still not an element of Storyline 2 - so you'll want to use the workaround mentioned above. 

I am running into this same issue as I have three different gifs that show a building being taken down or rebuilt or demolished and they all seem to start looping during the entire slide rather than when they appear on the timeline.

This is really tricky to get the timings just so on this and I find it very unpleasant that such an expensive piece of software isn't updated for what is clearly a known bug.