Several times I’ve tried to export animated GIFs but after the progress bar completes, nothing happens. I can see the progress bar strobing as if it is processing, but it never ends.
If you can post (or email support@tumult.com) your .hype document, that would be useful.
In v3.6 we changed to using a tool with better colors/filesize, but sometimes an export can take a ridiculously long time in the last step (and I guess potentially forever if you are seeing that!).
There is a method to use the older GIF export, should you ever hit issues via this terminal command:
defaults write com.tumult.Hype4 AnimatedGIFEngine Apple
For anyone experiencing issues, we'd appreciate a bug report via Help > Report an Issue… before changing to this method.
To change back, you can use:
defaults delete com.tumult.Hype4 AnimatedGIFEngine
That’s it. I tried to export it again. From the time the progress bar finished to the completion of the job was around four minutes.
Out of curiosity, what are the dimensions, duration, and framerate of the animation you are exporting?
600x400, main TL 4 secs, 2nd TL 6.5 secs.
BTW, the GIF that took four minutes beyond the completion of the progress bar was a different file. Processing the GIF for the fireplace example took a quarter of an hour.
Thanks - that is a bit of an absurd amount for such a short animation. Aside from changing the method with the defaults command above, if you choose a FPS that is evenly divisible by 100, it will be faster. There’s an extra step that happens when it isn’t divisible by 100 and that appears to be taking a large bulk of the time.
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I just ran into this problem. This is my first time using the gif export. The format is a bit large - 1366x1024. I aborted several times and then ran the terminal command above. and tried again a few times with the same result. I'm using a fresh install of Hype 4 on a fresh mbp.
I noticed there was a typo in the terminal command (it referenced Hype5 - now fixed); can you please try this one:
defaults write com.tumult.Hype4 AnimatedGIFEngine Apple
ah, I was curious about that 
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I sent over a file with a bug report.
It's included with Issue report #17127 — Incorrect pronunciation of "GIF". 
What are you trying to do with the different export method? Is it to save space? I noticed that the file export was ~24 MB. I dropped it on ImageOptim and it was a little over 5 MB. Maybe that's a better technique, if you're looking to reduce file sizes?
Although, the GIF didn't look very good. I tried both methods. I also tried making an animated PNG, but the quality was not so good. Animated PNG is still new tech... apparently bleeding edge tech.
...and since it's based on a 1.7 MB MP4 video... and all of the Hype animated exports were larger... this is going in the opposite direction of web optimization. Here's some additional information...
...that was the gif export settings. Here's the file info window...
...it seems to be stuck in a loop. Eventually I cancelled the export.
Thanks for sending over the file. I was able to export the Animated GIF, but it just takes a really long time.
There are two GIF export engines in Hype, Apple's that was used in Hype 2.5-3.5, and ImageMagick which is used by default in v3.6+. The goal of ImageMagick was to reduce file size and also improve color accuracy.
With your exported GIF, ImageMagick ultimately produces a GIF that is 8MB vs. Apple's is 24 MB.
Using ImageMagick unfortunately requires 3 separate passes on the GIF:
- the first is just writing it out as a PNG Sequence
- The second produces a GIF
- The third fixes up interframe delays to achieve a desired FPS
The longer the animation, the longer these steps can take, often to the point of being unreasonable.
We've also discovered since shipping:
- Occasionally it will not finish
- It can sometimes produce worse coloring (though some of this is subjective)
- It can sometimes produce large file sizes (though often not by as much as the other direction)
ImageOptim is ridiculously better than Apple's GIF export, and non-marginally better than ImageMagick's. Unfortunately the licenses (GPL 3) for its underlying technologies are not compatible with Hype as closed source commercial software. I definitely recommend using it if you don't mind the inconvenience.
(For that matter, a .mp4 file will almost nearly always be a smaller size and accepted in most places nowadays where GIF used to be the only option!)
Do you see this issue in Chrome? I think this is a bug in Safari/Apple's playback.
Both the underlying ImageMagick convert tool and apngasm we will be updating and re-evaluating their usage soon due to problems like these.
I just checked it in Brave (Chromium), seems OK.
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