Generate animated graphics (banners) on-the-fly ideas?

jhilb

I am very new PhP, still learning (old ASP convert).

I want to create animated graphic banners on-the-fly. I understand GIF was removed from the CD library. Any other animated graphic format supported by the GD library at this time? Or maybe another library I could install and use?

THanks

trooper

take a look at

imagemagick

greg252

I read on the GD site that the rights to LZW compression become public in 2004, this is when gif support will come back to GD 🙂

I would develop in an older version of GD (some of which have gif support) and go public in 2004. This would be the easiest way. ---Boy, do I hate lawyers!?!

jhilb

Ah, ok, I could use an older GD then to create the GIFs. But the older GD doesn't support animation natively (without ImageMagik) does it?

Assuming the older GD does not support animation, then I guess I would use imagemagik to cobble together separate GIF's into a single animated GIF, then read it back from disk, then spit it out?

How fast is this realistically? What I have in mind will be getting mega hits and each hit to the banner would have to be dynamically created. I am worried about the overhead of invoking ImageMagik all the time.

Any other GD libraries available for GIF animation, even fee based?

jhilb

Anyone? Is ImageMagik tightly integrated into PhP or do I need to exec to run the commands..

I noticed a wrapper, I guess, at

http://pear.php.net/package-info.php?package=imagick

Anyone try this?