Ulead GIF Animator 5 Frequently Asked Questions
Here are a few issues reported and some fixes, some common questions and the answers. If you have any of your own you would like answered, just email me. Contact info can be found at the bottom of this page.
Is Ulead GIF Animator 5 compatible with Windows Vista/7/8/10/11?
How to import an unsupported video format
GIF Animator 5 crashes when loading Video I/O
GIF Animator 5 crashes when clicking the "Optimize" tab in the workspace
How do I make a transparent gif?
Why does my saved gif go slower than when I use the play button?
How do I "paste into all frames?"
"Unable to finish the GIF Optimization process"
Is Ulead GIF Animator 5 compatible with Windows Vista/7/8/10/11?
While not ever officially deemed comapatible with Vista or any later Windows operating systems,
many users, including myself, have successfully installed and run GA 5 on newer systems. Mine runs fine on Windows 7 64-bit.
Some others, for reasons unknown, have had problems. I know Windows 8 and 10 users that are using GA 5 with no issues on their machines.
I recently installed it on a Windows 11 Home desktop, and have encountered some issues when navigating to plugin locations. I had to resort to editing registry keys.
After taking care of that, it's worked fine so far. I hope to add details in the near future on the various workarounds.
How to import an unsupported video format
Ulead GIF Animator 5 is old software. Hence, there are video formats you cannot import into GA 5 with the "Open Video" or "Add Video" commands. There are also video codecs (short for compressor-decompressor) that are incompatible with GA 5. However, with the help of my favorite graphic viewing software, IrfanView, we can do it. IrfanView can play a large variety of video formats, and you can export the video frames in BMP (bitmap) format, which GA 5 will happily import as indvidual frames. The latest version of IrfanView, 4.52, can now export flv files, but only the 64-bit version.
Open the video with IrfanView. Then click Options, Extract all frames... Select the folder you want to save the bmp files in. It's best to create a new folder for this purpose. You can select the start frame and end frame at the bottom of the dialogue box, if you only want to select part of a video. You can estimate this using the information on this box - it lists the Frames per second, and total frames. So if your video has a frame rate of 20 frames per second, and you want to start importing at 5 seconds in, then set the start frame at 20 x 5, or 100.
Once you have all the frames saved, it's time to import them into Ulead GIF Animator 5. Open GA 5, and click the
Add Image 
button.
You will want to adjust the frame delay from the default of 0.1 second (10 frames per second) to the frame rate of the video you imported. For example, if the video frame rate is 20 fps (frames per second), then the frame delay for each frame should be 0.05.
GIF Animator 5 crashes when loading Video I/O
This is due to video codecs on your system that the vio files in GA 5 aren't compatible with. You can fix this by deleting one or more of the VIO files in GIF Animator's program files, or by removing the entire VIO folder. Removing the VIO folder will remove the capability to work with video files entirely.
Your best bet is to remove one .vio file at a time. Move the file to your desktop so you can use it later. Start with the uvmpeg1.vio file, then try opening GA 5. If it still crashes, remove the uvavi.vio file. Try GA 5 again. If it works this time, try replacing the uvmpeg1.vio file. Open GA 5 again. If it crashes again, then both the uvmpeg1 and uvavi files are the culprits. If need be, you may also have to try removing the uvflc.vio files as well.
If you have PhotoImpact installed, the folder is located at C:\Program
files\Ulead Systems\PhotoImpact x\AnyGif\Vio (Program Files (x86) for 64-bit systems.)
If you have GIF Animator only, then the folder is C:\Program files\Ulead
Systems\Ulead GIF Animator\Vio (Program Files (x86) for 64-bit systems.)
Alternately:
If you click to view the error log, then you can try to determine the
exact cause for the crash. Click where it says to "click here."
A box will pop up that will have a "ModName" in the top right. This is the cause of the crash. In all likelihood, this is a video codec. If you unregister this codec in Windows, the error should no longer occur, and GA 5 will open normally. On the downside, and video files that require that codec to play will no longer play properly.
To unregister that codec in Windows, click Start, then Run. For this
example, I'm using the name of the codec shown in the screenshot. If you
have a different ModName in your error, use that. Be sure to copy the name
exactly.
Type "regsvr32 /U 3ivxdsencoder.ax" (without the quotes) and click OK to unregister that offending codec.
If you want to view a video later that needs that codec, do as above but do not include the '/U' in the command. Just remember to unregister it again to open GIF Animator 5.
GIF Animator 5 crashes when clicking the "Optimize" tab in the workspace
Sometimes GIF Animator 5 will freeze or crash when you go to the
Optimize Tab. This seems to only occur when your animation is of a large
area, such as 800 x 600 pixels or more, (or you are zoomed in on a smaller
animation) and the Auto-Optimize feature is on. To avoid this crash, just
use the zoom out tool
on the Tool
Panel to shrink the image down to a much smaller size. The smaller the
better, just to be safe. Don't forget to save your animation in UGA format
before you try optimizing, just in case.
How do I make a transparent gif?
If you're making a new animation, click "New" and make sure that "Fully
transparent" is selected under Canvas appearance. When you go to save your
animation, use the Optimization tab in the Workspace. If you just click 'File
and Save As...' or use the Save button to 'Save As,' it will use
whatever the current setting is on the Optimization tab, and if that does
not have Transparency turned on, it won't be transparent. If you want to
save your gif file with a transparent background, then this button must
be activated.
If you are trying to make an existing gif file with a background into a transparent one, then your best bet is to use the Magic Wand tool to select and remove the background from each object. See the Ulead GIF Animator 5 Basics tutorial, in the "Tools & Attributes" section for details on the Magic Wand tool. Once you're finished with that, change the Frame Removal Method to "Smart" then save as directed above.
Why does my saved gif go slower than when I use the play button?
The play button on the frame panel is mainly for a general preview of how things look, and may not be entirely accurate as far as speed goes.
The main factor is the browser (or other viewing software) used to view it with. The rendering engines of browsers differ, and this does affect playback speed. Internet Explorer (IE) can't seem to play animations with frame delay of 8 or less as quick as it should, while Firefox/Netscape do much better. Note that the Preview tab in GA 5 uses the IE rendering engine. Configure GA 5 (as noted on the section on the Preview tab) to view your GIF with several browsers.
It should also be noted that IE will sometimes play a gif with a transparent background at a different speed than the same animation with a background added.
Finally, the larger the GIF, both in number of frames and pixel area, the slower it will play. The gif98a file format was developed in 1998, and wasn't intended for very large animations. Saving your animation with GA 5 as a video or SWF file may have better results.
How do I "paste into all frames?"
Remember that when you paste something in GA 5, you're not really pasting it to a particular frame - you're actually adding an Object to the Object Manager. While the new object will be showing only in the frame that was selected when you used the Paste command, you don't need to paste it into every other frame. All you have to do is use the Synchronize Object Across Frames feature. Once you've added the object, position it to where you want it (for all frames), and then use the Synch feature, checking the applicable boxes.
"Unable to finish the GIF Optimization process"
This error typically happens when you try to optimize a massive animation - hundreds of frames, and a wide variety of colors. GA5 is trying to comb through all those frames, and create a global palette that can be used by all. So, it's looking for 256 colors (or less, depending on the settings) it can use for all frames. So on those massive animations, it could choke.
We can get around that:
Click File, Optimization Wizard...
In the section where it says, "Do you want to create a Global Opimized Palette to be used by all frames in the animation?" select No. Click Next.
From here on, you can set the rest of the parameters to your liking. It should work.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
Drop me a line!
