GIF to WMV: Convert Video from GIF(Animated GIF) to WMV(Windows Media Video) with River Past Video Cleaner, GIF2WMV converter, conversion

What is GIF?

Animated GIF is not really a video format. It is a sequence of GIF frames stringed together. Due to the 256-color limitation of GIF, the color is dithered. The compression is not that great, so the file size tend to be large given the frame rate and resolution.

However, since GIF is supported by all web browsers without any add-on, it is a great way to create small video thumbnails. Generally, the resolution should be kept small (80x60, for example), the frame rate should be kept low (4 fps, for example), and the duration should be kept under a few seconds.

Animated GIF is not really a video format. It uses 256-color GIF compression, with low quality and relatively large files. It is not suitable for video playback. However, since it is supported by all web browsers without any add-on's, it is a great format for video thumbnails and should be used for this purpose only.

To convert from animated GIF to a regular video file, you need to have Apple QuickTime installed.

What is WMV?

WMV stands for Windows Media Video -- developed and controlled by Microsoft. WMV is a generic name of Microsoft's video encoding solutions and doesn't necessarily define the technology what it uses -- since version 7 (WMV7) Microsoft has used its own flavour of MPEG-4 video encoding technology. DivX video format is originally based on hacked WMV codec.

Windows Media Format 11 adds support for HD video up to 1080P. WMF 11 runs only on Windows XP and Vista.

Additional information is available on Microsoft Windows Media page.

Launch River Past Video Cleaner

Once River Past Video Cleaner is installed properly, launch Video Cleaner.

Add File

Click on the "Add File" button on the tool bar. The standard file open dialog appears. Select "GIF - Animated GIF (*.gif)" in its "Files of type" combo box.

Select the file you want to convert and click "Open". The file will be added to the conversion file list.

Note: To convert from Animated GIF files, you must have Apple QuickTime installed.

River Past Video Cleaner

Select output format

Use the setting panel on the bottom of the window to control the output format. Click on the toggle to the left of the "Output Format" label to expand the panel. Select "WMV - Windows Media Video" as the "File Type".

Note: To convert to WMV files, you must have Windows Media Format 9 runtime installed.

Change Video Settings

Click on the toggle to the left of the "Video Settings" label to expand the panel.

Select "Specify" under "Size" and/or "Frame rate" to enter the video resolution and/or frame rate.

You can change the compressor, quality, size, and frame rate of the video.

The encoding mode is set to by "Quality" by default. Higher quality setting will result larger file. To control the file size precisely, change the mode to "Constant bitrate".

The bitrate is in the unit of kbit/second. Use this formula to calculate the video size per minute:

Video size/minute (KByte/second) = bitrate / 8 * 60.

Change Audio Settings

Click on the toggle to the left of the "Audio Settings" label to expand the panel.

Select the audio compressor for the conversion. Depending on the compressor, you may also change the sample rate, channel (stereo or mono), bits/sample, and bitrate.