How to Convert a Video Into a Gif Animation

Friday, February 5, 2010 by BBTUNA
There are many reasons why someone would want to convert a video into a GIF animation. The main one is so that people can put an animation of a video online without streaming the video itself. but for those not acquainted with the process, it can seem difficult. Here are two ways, one easy, one slightly more difficult (but more effective) for making GIF animations out of movies.

The first method is to use Microsoft's excellent (but unsupported) GIF animator: [1] Once you have downloaded and installed it, simply follow these steps:

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  1. Open the program
  2. Click the "Open" icon (the folder with an arrow) and browse to the video you want (must be in AVI format) and click "Open". The program will now read the individual frames from the video. This may take a while if you have a large video. If you are attempting to take a small part from a large video, Cut the video to only that part before opening it in MS GIF Animator. You can do this with the excellent and free VirtualDubMod.
  3. After the video has opened, you will see a list of images along the side. These will show you the different frames of your video, as you will see if you scroll down. If you click the "Play" button (with the arrow) your "video" should play. It may not be the speed you'd like yet.
  4. Now, select all frames by clicking the "Select All" button (the one with three squares on it).
  5. If you want your video to loop, click the "Animation" tab, select, looping, and set how many times you want it to loop, or select "forever" if you want it to loop continuously (in most cases, you should select this).
  6. Now click the "Image" tab. Set the duration of each frame using the slider. Every time you change the duration, play it again and see what it looks like. Generally, 2-6 works well, but depending on the framerate of your video, you may need more or even less.
  7. After you have the desired effect, click the "Save As" button (the one with multiple floppy disks) and save your GIF wherever you like.
  • 2
    The second method is slightly more complicated, but it can give better results. First, you must download VirtualDubMod from http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net/ . Second, download unFREEz from http://www.whitsoftdev.com/unfreez/ . Finally, download Easy Graphics Converter from http://etrusoft.com/graphic-converter/ . All of these programs are completely free. Then follow these steps:
    1. Open your video in VirtualDubMod (must be in AVI, OGM, MKV, or MPG format).
    2. Then choose File -> Save image sequence.
    3. Choose a folder, make sure that "Output Format" is set to PNG, choose a filename, and click OK. VirtualDubMod will create the images for you. When it is done, close the program.
    4. Now, open up Easy Graphic Converter.
    5. Click the "Settings" button and set to GIF and make sure the "24" radio button is selected under "Bits per pixel". Also, make sure "No resize" is checked, and then set an output folder (the easiest is to make a subfolder of the folder that you saved the images in from virtualDubMod). when you're done, click OK.
    6. Now click Add, and choose "Add files". Navigate to the folder/directory you saved the images in from VirtualDubMod, and select all the output images. Click OK, and then click "Start".
    7. Easy Graphic Converter will convert the files and ask if you want to save a log. Click no unless you want it for future reference.
    8. Now, browse to the folder you selected in Easy Graphic Converter. VirtualDubMod outputs an enormous amount of frames. Normally, half that number is fine. to get half, the easiest way is to set the folder view to large icons, and then using the Ctrl button and mouse selection, select every second row. Now, keeping the Ctrl button held, select every second column. you should now have selected every second image. If so, delete the ones that are selected. WARNING: If the first frame does not show up as the first file in the folder, rename the files so that all the frames appear in order.
    9. Now, open unFREEz. since all the files in your folder should be in order, go to your folder and select all the files. Now, drag them to the unFREEz taskbar button and hold it there until the unFREEz window pops up. Still holding the mouse button, drag the files into the white area of the unFREEz window and let go of the mouse button. All the frames should appear in order in a list.
    10. Now set the frame delay and click "Make Animated GIF". Don't close unFREEz yet. Open the resulting file in your browser and preview it. If it is too fast, go back to unFREEz, increase the frame delay, and Make the GIF file again. If it is too slow, decrease the frame delay and make it again. Once you have the right speed and you're happy with the result, close unFREEz and delete the folder with the original images in it. Make sure you keep the final GIF image, though.
  • 3
    Now you're done! Do whatever you like with the image. You can upload it onto the web or simply keep it for yourself.
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    VMware ESX storage: How to get local storage to act as a raw disk for VMs

    by BBTUNA

    VMTN Communities forum users have recently been asking how to make use of a LUN or partition on your local host within a virtual machine (VM) the same way you would if you had a SAN available. This is a more difficult task than some, and not every RAID controller allows this when using the VMware Infrastructure Client. We have to resort to command-line methods to make this happen.

    A VM with a raw disk or raw disk map (RDM) allows the guest OS to write directly to the LUN or disk partition within a LUN assigned to it, utilizing a pass-through mechanism. Using a raw disk or RDP won’t result in a noticeable performance gain, but there is often an improvement in management. In general, when a VMDK grows past a certain size set by the administrator, the administrator will opt to use a raw disk or RDM.

    With VMware ESX v2.5 and ESX v3.0 it took a few simple VM configuration file edits to enable a raw disk when using local storage. Unfortunately, those methods no longer work on VMware ESX v3.5. There is, however, a solution. It is not very elegant, but it will work.

    The solution is to use vmkfstools to import or copy a virtual machine disk file to the LUN or partition to use for the raw device. Here is an example that I just tested and seems to work. First, I needed to find out which device held the LUN I was going to assign to my VM.

    1. Run fdisk -l to find the LUN.

    # fdisk -l
    Disk /dev/cciss/c0d0: 146.8 GB, 146807930880 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 17848 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System /dev/cciss/c0d0p1   *         1        13    104391   83  Linux /dev/cciss/c0d0p2            14       650   5116702+  83  Linux /dev/cciss/c0d0p3           651      1287   5116702+  83  Linux /dev/cciss/c0d0p4          1288     17848 133026232+   f  Win95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/cciss/c0d0p5          1288      1924   5116671   83  Linux /dev/cciss/c0d0p6          1925      2561   5116671   83  Linux /dev/cciss/c0d0p7          2562      3198   5116671   83  Linux /dev/cciss/c0d0p8          3199      3453   2048256   82  Linux swap /dev/cciss/c0d0p9          3454     17835 115523383+  fb  Unknown /dev/cciss/c0d0p10        17836     17848    104391   fc  Unknown
    Disk /dev/cciss/c0d1: 440.4 GB, 440430842880 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 53546 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
    Disk /dev/cciss/c0d1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

    2. Run esxcfg-vmhbadevs to find the vmhba device associated with the LUN.

    # esxcfg-vmhbadevs vmhba0:0:0     /dev/cciss/c0d0 vmhba0:1:0     /dev/cciss/c0d1

    3. Create the VM with a standard virtual disk (VMDK).

    4. Use vmkfstools from the command-line interface to import the VMDK into the vmhba device associated with the LUN using a disk target of RAW. Kill the import after you hit 1%.

    # vmkfstools -i OpenFiler.vmdk -d raw:/vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba0:1:0:0 OpenFiler_1.vmdk Destination disk format: raw disk out of '/vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba0:1:0:0' Cloning disk 'OpenFiler.vmdk'... Clone: 1% done.

    5. Review the resultant VMDK metadata file. Note that the size of the LUN is references. For size take 860216490 and multiply by 512 for 410 GBs.

    # cat OpenFiler_1.vmdk # Disk DescriptorFile version=1 CID=c0699ec2 parentCID=ffffffff createType="vmfsRaw"
    # Extent description RW 860216490 VMFSRAW "/vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba0:1:0:0"
    # The Disk Data Base #DDB
    ddb.virtualHWVersion = "4" ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 97 5c a6 e9 59-f3 de ba f6 83 ed 15 73" ddb.geometry.cylinders = "1044" ddb.geometry.heads = "255" ddb.geometry.sectors = "63" ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"

    5. Using the VMware Infrastructure Client (VIC), add an existing disk into the VM or add the following lines to the VMX file. (Note that you want to use a virtual SCSI controller not already in use. Also, the VM you make these changes to should be powered off and perhaps even unregistered if you are doing this from the CLI. If you use the VIC add the device following the red arrow path in the diagram below.)

    scsi1.present = "true" scsi1.sharedBus = "none" scsi1.virtualDev = "lsilogic" scsi1:0.present = "true" scsi1:0.fileName = "OpenFiler_1.vmdk" scsi1:0.deviceType = "scsi-hardDisk"

    Now you have a VM that can directly access the local LUN on your VMware ESX host. I imagine this will work the same way for ESXi.
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    How to Install and Configure DHCP Server in Ubuntu Server

    Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by BBTUNA
    A DHCP Server assigns IP addresses to client computers. This is very often used in enterprise networks to reduce configuration efforts. All IP addresses of all computers are stored in a database that resides on a server machine.

    A DHCP server can provide configuration settings using two methods

    Address Pool

    This method entails defining a pool (sometimes also called a range or scope) of IP addresses from which DHCP clients are supplied their configuration properties dynamically and on a fist come first serve basis. When a DHCP client is no longer on the network for a specified period, the configuration is expired and released back to the address pool for use by other DHCP Clients.

    MAC Address

    This method entails using DHCP to identify the unique hardware address of each network card connected to the network and then continually supplying a constant configuration each time the DHCP client makes a request to the DHCP server using that network device.

    Install DHCP server in ubuntu

    sudo apt-get install dhcp3-server

    This will complete the installation.

    Configuring DHCP server

    If you have two network cards in your ubuntu server you need to select which interface you want to use for DHCP server listening.By default it listens to eth0.

    You can change this by editing /etc/default/dhcp3-server file

    sudo vi /etc/default/dhcp3-server

    Find this line

    INTERFACES=”eth0″

    Replace with the following line

    INTERFACES=”eth1″

    Save and exit.This is optional.

    Next you need to make a backup copy of /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf file

    cp /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf.back

    Edit /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf file using the following command

    sudo vi /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf

    Using address pool method

    You need to change the following sections in /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf file

    default-lease-time 600;
    max-lease-time 7200;

    option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
    option broadcast-address 192.168.1.255;
    option routers 192.168.1.254;
    option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2;
    option domain-name “yourdomainname.com”;

    subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
    range 192.168.1.10 192.168.1.200;
    }

    save and exit the file

    This will result in the DHCP server giving a client an IP address from the range 192.168.1.10-192.168.1.200 . It will lease an IP address for 600 seconds if the client doesn’t ask for a specific time frame. Otherwise the maximum (allowed) lease will be 7200 seconds. The server will also “advise” the client that it should use 255.255.255.0 as its subnet mask, 192.168.1.255 as its broadcast address, 192.168.1.254 as the router/gateway and 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 as its DNS servers.

    Using MAC address method

    This method is you can reserver some of the machines or all the machines with fixed ip address.In the following example i am using fixed ip address for server1,server2,printer1 and printer2

    default-lease-time 600;
    max-lease-time 7200;

    option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
    option broadcast-address 192.168.1.255;
    option routers 192.168.1.254;
    option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2;
    option domain-name “yourdomainname.com”;

    subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
    range 192.168.1.10 192.168.1.200;
    }

    host server1 {
    hardware ethernet 00:1b:63:ef:db:54;
    fixed-address 192.168.1.20;
    }

    host server2 {
    hardware ethernet 00:0a:95:b4:d4:b0;
    fixed-address 192.168.1.21;
    }

    host printer1 {
    hardware ethernet 00:16:cb:aa:2a:cd;
    fixed-address 192.168.1.22;
    }

    host printer2 {
    hardware ethernet 00:0a:95:f5:8f:b3;
    fixed-address 192.168.1.23;
    }

    Now you need to restart dhcp server using the following command

    sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server restart

    Configure Ubuntu DHCP Client

    If you want to configure your ubuntu desktop as DHCP client following this procedure

    You need to open /etc/network/interfaces file

    sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

    make sure you have the following lines (eth0 is an example)

    auto lo eth0
    iface eth0 inet dhcp
    iface lo inet loopback

    Save and exit the file

    You need to restart networking services using the following command

    sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

    How to find DHCP server IP address

    You need to use the following commands

    sudo dhclient

    or

    tail -n 15 /var/lib/dhcp3/dhclient.*.leases
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    Aircrack-ng on the MAC

    by BBTUNA 
    There are two options you can take as I see it :  

    1. MacPorts (formerly DarwinPorts)
    2. "Build" from "source"  

    This guide assumes the following :
    * Downloads go to your desktop
    * You have installed X11 & XCode tools and all that jazz from your OSX 10.4Install disc
    * We will call your user name "uname" for this guide
    * The $ symbol denotes a new line input in terminal and should not actually be entered, just whatever follows it  

    OPTION 1 : MacPorts  Download macports from : http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/downloads/MacPorts-1.5.0/MacPorts-1.5.0-10.4.dmg
    Mount and install the dmg file. (note that during the actual physical install to disc, macports seems to hang for a while, this is because it is updating all its sources and such, just let it go)
    You now have to add /opt/local to your $PATH. I usually do this thru vi, I will do my best to explain how to do this thru terminal :  

    $ sudo vi /etc/profile
    Arrow down two spaces to the "PATH" line and hit Shift+A this will bring you to the end (if /opt/local is already there, refer to the last line in this paragraph), arrow over left once, and add :/opt/local This should all be within the ending quote mark and should look something like this :
    PATH="/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/opt/local" now hit Esc then Shift+; then wq! then enter

    Close and open a new terminal window and type the following :

    sudo port -v selfupdate
    sudo port -vc install aircrack-ng

    After this is done doing the damn thang, you now have aircrack-ng installed.

    $ aircrack-ng in terminal to get a list of commands

    OPTION 2 : "Source"

    Download aircrack : http://download.aircrack-ng.org/aircrack-ng-0.9.1.tar.gz

    Un-tar/gzip it by double clicking on the file
    Open the folder and rename the Makefile to Makefile.old
    Rename the Makefile.osx to Makefile
    In terminal :

    $ cd /Users/uname/Desktop/aircrack-ng-0.9.1
    $ make
    $ sudo make install

    You now have to add /usr/local/bin to your $PATH. I usually do this thru vi, I will do my best to explain how to do this thru terminal :

    $ sudo vi /etc/profile

    Arrow down two spaces to the "PATH" line and hit Shift+A this will bring you to the end (if /opt/local is already there, refer to the last line in this paragraph), arrow over left once, and add :/usr/local/bin This should all be within the ending quote mark and look something like this :

    PATH="/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin" now hit Esc then Shift+; then wq! then enter

    After this is done doing the damn thang, you now have aircrack-ng installed.

    $ aircrack-ng in terminal to get a list of commands
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    Reflashing FON Fonera 2200

    by BBTUNA

    Steps to flash a Fonera 2200 using Linux:

    Note: This has been tested using Ubuntu. If you don't have a modern linux distro installed on a computer, these steps can be done using the Ubuntu (or probably other) "Live CD" without needing to install Linux on your computer. You can go here to get the Ubuntu LiveCD. We have tried to make this as simple as possible, but it would be helpful if you have some familiarity with Linux (or someone available who has).

    1. Boot your Linux computer (or Live CD) and bring up a terminal window (under "Applications", then "Accessories", then "terminal" on Ubuntu)

    2. Make sure it is connected to the internet, then type the following to download the files you will need:

      sudo apt-get upgrade
      sudo apt-get install wget
      wget http://www.open-mesh.com/flashing/openwrt-atheros-2.6-vmlinux.gz
      wget http://www.open-mesh.com/flashing/openwrt-atheros-2.6-root.jffs2-64k
      wget http://www.open-mesh.com/flashing/easyflash
      wget http://www.open-mesh.com/flashing/flash
      chmod +x easyflash
      chmod +x flash


    3. Plug in your FON 2200 (check the bottom label for the model number) to your Ethernet LAN port on your computer.

    4. Type: ./flash (note: If your Fonera is NOT connected to eth0, modify the file "flash" accordingly)

    5. Plug in the FON 200 to power.

    6. You should see something like this displayed:

      No packet
      No packet
      Peer MAC: 00:18:84:80:67:1C (this will be the MAC address of your router)
      You MAC: 00:ba:be:ca:ff:ee
      Your IP: 192.168.1.0
      Setting IP address...
      Loading rootfs...
      Sending rootfs. xxxx blocks...
      Initializing partiions...
      Rootfs partition size now 0x006f0000
      Flashing rootfs...
      Loading Kernel...
      Sending kernel, xxxx blocks...
      Flashing Kernel...
      Setting boot_script_data...

      Done. Restarting device...


    7. Go get lunch. This will take 15-30 minutes, depending upon the flash chip speed in your router. DO NOT INTERRUPT!

    8. When it is done, the Open-Mesh Flash Utility will automatically close.

    Now plug in your FON's Ethernet port to a DSL or other internet source that provides a DHCP address and power cycle it.

    Congratulations! You now have your first Open-Mesh node! Repeat this process for all other nodes you'd like to use on your network. We recommend that you test 2-3 first to make sure it fulfills your needs before flashing more.

    Note: If the WLAN light does not blink and power light go out (this is a known minor problem, but indicates your router has been correctly reflashed) after a few minutes of being connected to a DSL router, then most likely the flash failed and you'll need to either try on another Windows machine or use the Linux instructions above (recommended).

    Credits: EasyFlash utility by Sven-Ola Tuecke (www.freifunknet). Firmware by Antonio Anselmi (www.blogin.it),Marek Lindner and the entire B.A.T.M.A.N. team (www.open-mesh.net), Paul Kube(kokoro.ucsd.edu/nodogsplash/), and of course OpenWrt (www.openwrt.org).
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