How to create animations with Tip-Animator: 

Hmm,

what needs to be done to make these tip-animations?!? Well, thats what I do:

00) download the video or animation (youtube, google, etc.)
01) a) if its a GIF/FLI/FLC animation, use Irfan View to extract all frames
b) if it is a video and not in AVI format, use a converter (Super! or something else)
to convert into AVI, then use Irfan View to extract all frames...

02) convert all frames into .PNG format (with Irfan View or XnView)
03) downsize all frames to a max. of 160x100 pixels (max. tip-animator-resolution) if I only need 30-50 frames, otherwise downsize to 100x70 pixels or even 80x50 pixels for up to 200 frames (with Irfan View or XnView)
04) if the frame resolution is smaller than 160x100 pixels, generate a black border around it, so that it has 160x100 pixels size again (with Irfan View or XnView)...

05) choose the most nescessary frames - this is the hardest job !! If I have a GIF animation with just 30 frames, its easy, I can simply choose all frames - but if I have a video with 3000 or more frames it is hard to choose a max. of 200 frames from it (usually I skip frames, e.g. use only every 2nd, every 4th, every 8th,... frame, with some exceptions here and there)...and delete un-nescessary/unwanted/redundant frames.

06) copy/move the chosen (wanted) frames (.PNG) into the folder of Tip-Converter 1.01
07) run tipconv.exe (a Java program) and load 3-5 random frames to set the
palette, the saturation and brightness and test with your own eyes if they look good
08) generate a batch file that a) has the appropriate settings for palette, saturation,
brightness and b) also executes tipconv which then converts all .PNG frames into .TIP frames

09) run the batchfile and generate the tip-frames (they have the same name as the PNG frames, however tip-animator only accepts numbers 0001, 0002, 0003,...) 
10) run e.g. "Ant Renamer" and rename the filenames of all tip frames into contigous numbers like 0001.TIP, 0002.TIP, 0003.TIP, etc.

11) under WIN XP I execute the command prompt, go to the tip-converter folder (which also contains the tip-animator on my computer) and execute one of the two the tip-animator versions:
a) tip-animator 2.9 (min. 64k RAM, allows lots of frames, shows no garbage when animation starts, but therefore has high flicker or slow frame-drawing whenever the frames are too different);
b) tip-animator 2xb (min. 128k RAM, allows less frames, shows garbage when the animation starts - which disappears when the animation re-starts, thanks to 2x buffer there is no flicker)

usually I start a command like this at the command prompt:
tipanm29 1 135 max delay5
which will start tip-animator 2.9 and pack frames 1 to 135 into an animation with some (time-) delay between frames;
if the animation is too flickery I try tip-animator 2xb instead:
tipanmxb 1 135 max delay5
and if an error occurs (usually some animation data-block is too long) I try out some tricks...
(if they don`t work I have to lower the resolution or use less frames).

12) if the tip-animation (tipanm.xex) has been created, run+test it under Atari 800 Win plus (if it does not look good, try another time-delay, try another palette/saturation/brightness, try the other tip-animator, ...)

13) if I like the tip-animation I keep it (and most of the time upload it at atari-age), otherwise I delete it
14) rename the tip-animation "tipanm.xex" into a more descriptive name...

As said before, with fullscreen frames (160x100 pixels) one can normally only use 30-50 frames, lowering the frame size (resolution of frames) therefore gives the chance to use more frames, e.g. up to 200 frames. But the animation size (and the possibility to create a working animation) depends on the frame size (resolution in pixels), the number of frames (10, 20, 50, 100, ...) and most of all how much the frames differ from each other (if there are low differences between frames, the chance to create a working animation is higher and the size of the animation is usually small[er]). Just some examples, with the Spongebob intro I could use 162 frames but only in 80x50 pixels resolution, whereas with the Buzzed intro (taken from Amiga) I could use up to 450 frames with full 160x100 pixels resolution; I have tip-animations with 30 frames, low memory usage (they work on 64k computers) and they are flicker free, but I also have animations with 2-5 frames which would have flickered very much, so I had to use tip animator 2xb and therefore a minimum of 128k RAM computers... 

In the end, its a trial and error situation, not everything works, sometimes simple and short animations will not work as tip-animations (or they flicker heavily) and sometimes "difficult" or long videos work quite good as tip-animations. It is just a "converter-job" I do when creating tip-animations for the A8 (converting animations or videos into tip-animations), but it requires some time and lots of trial and error to do so...

-Andreas Koch.