How can I create animated GIF images in MATLAB ?

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

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

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

[Royi Avital]

Could you add support for APNG? It is much superior to GIF.

[Chad Greene]

Royi has a good point!

[Michael Abboud]

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]

Very useful and easy to modify. Thanks a lot.

[Coleman Barrie]

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

Answer 2

[Chad Greene]

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

Answer 3

[Alec]

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?

Answer 4

[Shashank Rai]

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

[Coleman Barrie]

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