tzikeh

Over the years, I've tried to make mini-movie icons by trial and error--see this post's icon for an example--and they always come out with very choppy movement. The movie plays just fine in QT or VLC, but I get it into Photoshop CS4's animation window and it turns into my icon of El, up there, or this icon of Wilson:

Or the like.

I'm absolutely at my wit's end trying to figure this out for myself. I've looked through endless icon tutorials about how to make mini-movie icons, but none of them ever address the speed and smoothness problems I invariably run into.

Here's an example of a movie clip, a *good* icon made from that movie clip, and my pathetic attempt.

There's the bit. (EEEEEE I love Sherlock! *cough*)

Here's a great animated icon from this scene:

The animated part of the icon is only 75 pixels wide, which helps reduce the file size (lj icons can only be 40k, as we know).

Even keeping my animation 75 pixels wide, with the same number of frames, I couldn't reduce the file size to less than 80k. And, as per usual, my version looks like Sherlock is auditioning for the remake of Chariots of Fire, even though I've set the frame rate to 0 seconds (no delay).

Here's what my attempt looks like:

If anyone has ANY ideas for me, I'd be oh-so-grateful. I'm using Photoshop CS4 to make the icons, and I grab the video from The Usual Places, generally in .avi format.