How do I make an animated .gif from something on a DVD?

I have a DVD.

I want to take a scene from that DVD and turn it into an animated .gif image so I can use it as an avatar.

Does anyone know how I would go about doing that?

Is there any free software that anyone can recommend?

 

is your cat dressed as Garnet? ^

 

Not specifically Garnet, just a generic White Mage from Final Fantasy I, III, V and X-2.

 

anyway.. now down to ur question.. id say um... i think..'adobe imageready'

was that any help?

 

(1) You must rip the video from the dvd to an .avi file, I suggest using xvid. There are various shareware applications which will do that. Most won't allow you to sample 30 seconds of video -- they'll want to do the whole thing.

(2) Get virtualdub and select the bit of video you want. Be sure to resize and crop the image and change the framerate to something slower. Save the small clip as full uncompressed video.

If you have a TV card / video capture card, then skip step (1), and plug a dvd player into the card, and rip the video from the dvd player that into virtualdub, while you play the clip you want (on the dvd player). That's probably the easiest way to be honest.

(3) Get the demo version of Animation Shop Pro (bundled with Paint Shop Pro). Import the video clip, cut out unwanted frames, choose colour depth, and save as animated gif.