How can I create animated GIF images in MATLAB ?

Asked by MathWorks Support Team on 27 Jun 2009

Latest activity Commented on by Coleman Barrie on 15 Jun 2019

Accepted Answer by MathWorks Support Team

3,694 views (last 30 days)

I would like to know if there is MATLAB functionality to create an animated GIF in MATLAB.

Products

MATLAB

4 Answers

Link

Answer by MathWorks Support Team on 12 Jun 2017

Accepted Answer

Use the 'imwrite' function to create an animated GIF. An animated GIF contains a series of images all combined into one file. For this example,

1. Draw a series of plots for the function y = x^n for different values of n

2. Capture them as images

3. Write them into a GIF file

h = figure;
axis tight manual % this ensures that getframe() returns a consistent size
filename = 'testAnimated.gif';
for n = 1:0.5:5
    % Draw plot for y = x.^n
    x = 0:0.01:1;
    y = x.^n;
    plot(x,y) 
    drawnow 
      % Capture the plot as an image 
      frame = getframe(h); 
      im = frame2im(frame); 
      [imind,cm] = rgb2ind(im,256); 
      % Write to the GIF File 
      if n == 1 
          imwrite(imind,cm,filename,'gif', 'Loopcount',inf); 
      else 
          imwrite(imind,cm,filename,'gif','WriteMode','append'); 
      end 
  end

For a more detailed description on creating an animated GIF File, see the example “Write Animated GIF” on the 'imwrite' function reference page:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/imwrite.html#btv452g-1

5 Comments

Show 2 older comments

Michael Abboud on 1 Aug 2017

That's a good suggestion, thanks for commenting! I have submitted an enhancement request for this functionality, so it may be considered for a future release of MATLAB.

Michael Chan on 15 Oct 2018

Very useful and easy to modify. Thanks a lot.

Coleman Barrie on 15 Jun 2019

Thank you for writing this very helpful as a framework to modify

Link

Answer by Chad Greene on 4 Jun 2017

Or, for a much simpler option, use the gif function on File Exchange.

0 Comments

Link

Answer by Alec on 19 Dec 2013

So it appears that `imwrite` now supports writing animated grayscale GIFs "When writing multiframe GIF images, X should be an 4-dimensional M-by-N-by-1-by-P array, where P is the number of frames to write."

But if I try to pass it an M-by-N-by-3-by-P it seems to treat each RGB color channel as a separate grayscale frame. Is there now way to write an animated color GIF without a for loop over the frames?

0 Comments

Link

Answer by Shashank Rai on 1 May 2017

Edited by Chad Greene on 17 Oct 2018

x = 0:0.01:1;
figure(1)
filename = 'testnew51.gif';
for n = 1:0.5:5
      y = x.^n;
      plot(x,y)
      drawnow
      frame = getframe(1);
      im = frame2im(frame);
      [imind,cm] = rgb2ind(im,256);
      if n == 1;
          imwrite(imind,cm,filename,'gif', 'Loopcount',inf);
      else
          imwrite(imind,cm,filename,'gif','WriteMode','append');
      end
end

1 Comment

Coleman Barrie on 15 Jun 2019

Thank you for writing this very helpful as a framework to modify