Hey,
one of the things I use Shotcut for it to create small GIFs. I really find it useful for this, but I’ve found that a while back something changed in the gif export settings. Earlier they were pretty good, and file sizes were fine, but after this change (maybe late last year), the gif is highly dithered and as a result the file sizes are larger, as well as harder to optimize later with for instance gifsicle.
I’ve found that if I instead export the frames as PNG then edit them in Ulead GIF Animator (still very useful) the result is much better and with a much smaller file size. But it’s kind of a much longer way to do things.
Is there any way to change the dithering options used or change in other ways the options used to export gifs? I assume these would be ffmpeg options but I have no clue about all the options there and what would apply to exporting from Shotcut.
Yes, I usually lower the resolution to 720p or something and then reduce it more in other tools, since Shotcut doesn’t keep aspect ratio without manual calculation. I think the problem is that Shotcut uses error diffusion (ed) to export GIFs?
From the article:
Most of the other dithering methods you will find out there are error based. The principle is that a single color error (the difference between the color picked in the palette and the expected one) will spread all over the image, causing a “swarming effect” between frames, even in areas were the source was completely identical between frames. While this often provides a much better quality, it completely kills the compression of GIF:
It also makes it really hard to apply further compression.
I tried “sws_dither=bayer” in the “other” field as documented here: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-scaler.html
But it appears to not change anything in Shotcut.
Are the quotes needed or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks - I still can’t make the option actually change the dithering used though.
Not that it’s a big deal, the dithering looks good, it just makes for larger images and they are harder to compress further because of the little “dots” if that makes sense? I usually reduce the image further in other tools.
I am sure there was a change how Shocut exported gifs a while back though.
Thanks