5

I run a technical blog and publish articles regularly that have GIF animations. Examples: one two three.

I plan to aggregate a bunch of these articles into an eBook of sorts. I know I could break out the animations into individual, still images, but I think the fact that they are animated make them much more conducive to learning and involving for the reader.

As far as I know, a typical PDF does not allow for a GIF animation. If not for a PDF, what options do I have for a published eBook that also allow for these animations?

|improve this question
  • Do they have to stay as animated GIFs? Or could you convert them to a different format that is more easily included in a popular eBook format? – Brandon Haugen Jan 26 '17 at 22:43
  • @BrandonHaugen What other format would allow an animation / video in a PDF? – Eddie Jan 27 '17 at 1:12
  • 1
    PDF supports a variety of video formats, depending on what the intended audience is going to view the files with these may be an option. Adobe provides a list of what is supported by Acrobat : helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/… – Brandon Haugen Jan 27 '17 at 1:17
  • 1
    EPUB 3.0 supports a variety of video formats as well that might suit your needs. I am not sure if EPUB reading applications are better or worse at supporting video than PDF viewing applications : epubzone.org/news/multimedia-support-in-epub-3 – Brandon Haugen Jan 27 '17 at 1:19
  • @BrandonHaugen Interesting, didn't know about video support in PDFs. Thanks for the link. Regarding EPUB, how portable is that? I would hate to have to troubleshoot case by case when customers purchase EPUB, versus the general ubiquitous support for PDF files. – Eddie Jan 27 '17 at 20:06
2

We can integrate the gif format in epub3 packages say as a background to div container or another option would be convert gif to mp4 format.

|improve this answer
  • Sorry to just now see this answer. Could you elaborate, Leon? Yes, the GIFs can be converted to MP4 (they started as MP4, actually). – Eddie Sep 10 '18 at 1:46

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.