Alright, here's a rough guide to creating an animated gif from a video using the free programs below. This tutorial is not only intended to show you how to get the end result, but to be able to apply the same technique to videos other than the sample video provided.

UnFREEz
IrfanView
SUPER (optional)
VirtualDub 1.7.1
VirtualDub-MPEG2

Step 1 - Convert the file to a usable format

The programs I use to create animated gifs accept only avi and mpg/mpeg files. If your source video is any other format, or is unreadable by these programs, you will need to convert it. A simple way to test this is to open up the relevant copy of VirtualDub (VirtualDub-MPEG2 if it is an mpg file or VirtualDub 1.7.1 if it is an avi) by double-clicking VirtualDub.exe and attempt to open the source file. This can be done through the File menu or by simply dragging your movie into the window. If the video loads and you see the first frame, you can skip to Step 2. If the first frame says "Warning: Nothing to ouput Bframe decoder lag," it is still useable and you can skip to Step 2. If any other error is shown, you will need to convert it.

**Note, if the source video needs to be converted and it is of a large size (300mb+), I highly recommend first cutting out the portion which you intend to animate. This will make the conversion process go along much quicker as you only will need to convert a fraction of the video rather than the entire length, which can take hours depending on the size. As there are many different types of formats, it would be impossible to list all the programs that are able to do this. I recommend going to www.videohelp.com and searching for a program that will allow you to edit your file.

Open SUPER. Drag your file into the panel highlighted in red:

Next choose your Output Container, Video Codec and encoder (you can disable audio as we won't be needing it). Honestly, I really don't know all that much about "optimizing" a file so I usually end up experimenting with all sorts of video codecs and video settings until I get a file that most closely mimics the quality of the original and works in VirtualDub. There is also a basic guide to using SUPER that you can reference for more information.

Once you have picked your settings, right-click anywhere, select "Output File Saving Management" and select the folder you wish to save the file to.

For the sake of this tutorial, I've prepared a video that you can work with to see how you would do the rest of the steps. You can find it here. If, when opening it, you get no picture, you need to download and install the Xvid codec.

Step 2 - Convert the video to images

Start VirtualDub 1.7.1 and open Jones.avi by either dragging it into the window or opening it through File -->Open Video File. Your window should look something like this (it may show more frames if it is larger):

In order to convert the video to images, VirtualDub needs to be in Full Processing Mode and uncompressed. To double-check these settings, go to Video and make sure the dot is next to Full Processing Mode. Next, go to Video-->Compression and make sure "Uncompressed RGB/YCbCr" is selected in the left panel, as shown below:

Once the settings have been verified, we can export the image files. First though, a folder needs to be created on your hard drive to hold the image files about to be exported. On your hard drive, create a folder and name it "Tutorial." Once you have created a folder, click on File --> Export --> Image Sequence. You should see the following window:

Step 3 - Crop and resize the images

Once the images have all been exported, minimize VirtualDub and open the image Jones000 in Irfanview. Press and hold the right arrow key on your keyboard and you can see a rough estimate of how the animation will look.  Of course, for most purposes this animation is too large so we'll need to crop and/or resize it.

When going back and viewing Jones000 again, you'll notice that a lot of the field is being shown. Because the point of a gif is to show action, it might help to try to crop the view to just the play/players we want to see. Click and drag a box around just the players on the field; as you are doing so, notice that the X and Y coordinates of the box are shown in the title bar of Irfanview, along with the dimension in pixels. Once you have completed the box, click on File --> Batch Conversion/Rename. You should see a window similar to this:



Click and drag the window until you are able to see the the dimensions in the title bar of the previous window. Next, under "Output directory" click "Browse" and find your Tutorial folder. Press "Ok." Now, because we want to save these cropped images in a seperate folder, we need to create one. To do this, simply type "Cropped" after the backwards slash which follows "Tutorial". The new folder will be created once we start the conversion. Under Work as: select "Batch Conversion." Under 

make sure JPG - JPEG Format is selected. Click the Options button to the right,  set the Save Quality to 100 and make sure all checkboxs are unchecked. Next, check the checkbox next to "Use advanced options" and click on "Set advanced options." You should see a window similar to this:



Check the Crop checkbox. You should still be able to see the title bar of the original window containing the dimensions of your box. Normally, you would enter those numbers into the corresponding fields but for this tutorial, enter the following numbers:

X-Coord: 105    Y-Coord: 54
Width: 397    Height: 212

Next, check the checkboxes next to "Preserve aspect ratio" and "Use Resample function." Press "Ok".

Back in the Batch Conversion window, there is a panel to the left which shows the files to be processed. In the column of buttons to the right, press "Add all" to add all your images. Finally, press "Start" start the conversion. A status window will appear, showing your progress. Once the conversion is completed, press "Exit."

Now, even though the the files have been cropped, they need to be resized to meet the new signature rule of the Chicago Bears board. This rule states that no pictures in a user's signature can exceed 110 pixels. Go to File --> Open and open Jones000 located in the Cropped folder. Next, go to Image --> Resize/Resample. You should see a window similar to this:



Make sure "Preserve Aspect Ratio" is checked and enter 110 for the height as shown above; the corresponding width will automatically be entered. Make note of the new dimensions and press "Cancel" to return to the main window. Next

: select "GIF-Compuserve GIF" as the output format and click on "Set Advanced Options." Uncheck Crop, check "Resize" and enter the values we got from the Resize window. When completed, your window should look like the one below:





Press "Ok", add all the images from the Cropped folder to the Input File by pressing "Add All" and press "Start" to begin resizing; all the files should be saved to the Thumbs folder. Once the resizing is done, press "Exit" to close the status window and return to the main window. Close Irfanview.


Step 4 - Adjust the file size

As a rule of thumb, I like to keep all of my animations I use on forums under 2mb; I feel this is a good middle-ground for 56k'ers and cable users alike. It's large enough to have a decent size animation but not the point where someone's connection bogs down while it tries to load it. To check what size our animation will be, go to the Thumbs folder that was created inside of the Tutorial folder.  Press Ctrl+A to select all the files, right-click on any file that is selected and go to Properties to view the size. The Properties window shows the cumulative size to be 5.11MB, 3MB over the "limit."

Now, there are two ways to reduce the size of an animation. One way is to shrink the dimensions of your animation. The second way is decrease the number of frames - or files - in the animation. The negative of the former is that depending on the number of files in your animation, you would have to make it *really* small to squeeze in under the limit. The negative of the latter is that the more frames you take out, the more "jerky" the animation will get; also, the more frames you take out, the faster the animation will appear. Most of the time, you need to make a compromise between the two. I'll usually resize the animation a small amount and remove some frames as well, then check the size. If I'm still over, I'll tweak it some more. This is the part of making an animation that requires patience; the final goal is to have an animation where you're able to see what's going yet at the same time, have it appear realistic (unless you're going for a different look). After making a few animations, I've found that generally, any animation 200 frames or over is too big. Seeing as how our animation, at 338 frames, is well over that, a good starting point would be to try to reduce the number of frames and see how the end result looks. If it's too jerky and/or too fast, we can add back in some more frames and start chipping away at the dimensions.

To roughly see how many files it would take to reach the "maximum" of 2mb, look at the size of the files.  They range from 14 to 17 KB, so we can take the liberal average to be 16 KB. Dividing 16 into 2000 gives 125. So in other words, we need to reduce the number of frames from 338 to 125 to meet our 2MB limit. Dividing 125 into 338 gives us 2.704; this means that if we wanted to remove the excess pictures evenly, we could only keep roughly every third picture. Fortunately, there's an easy way to do this in VirtualDub.

First off, delete all the images in the Tutorial, Cropped and Thumbs folder (keep the empty folders). Hopefully, you still have VirtualDub minimized. If not, repeat Step 1 to load the video and check that it's 

in Full Processing Mode and uncompressed. Next, go to Video --> Framerate and under Frame rate conversion select the option to process every third frame. The window should look something like this:




Now Export the images as we did before to the Tutorial folder. Close VirtualDub and open the Tutorials folder. You will notice that the number of frames has gone from 338 to 112. Open Jones000 in Irfanview and hold down the right arrow key on your keyboard to preview the animation. As predicted, the animation has sped up considerably. Return to the first frame in Irfanview (Jones000) and 

when you do so to preserve the order. The window should look something like this:



Make sure "Loop animation" is checked, click on "Make Animated GIF" and save the gif somewhere on your hard drive. Minimize UnFREEz, open the newly created gif in Irfanview and view the animation. Now the animation seems as if the play is in slow motion. Go back to UnFREEz and you'll notice a field called Frame Delay. Supposedly, this is the delay time between frames in centiseconds, or 1/100th of a second. I've found it to be buggy, however. For example, at 0 cs, or no delay, the animation should move at it's fastest yet it is actually at it's slowest. Not until you get to a 2 centisecond delay does the animation speed up. Because of this, it is necessary to experiment with different delay times. For this animation, I've found a 4 or 5 centisecond delay looks the most realistic. Pictured below is the animation with a 5 centisecond delay:

 


Well, there you have it. Now you should have a rough idea of how to create your own animations from video. Good luck!