Tutorial for Gif.
civique requested how to create this sort of gif. → ^see above^
Ok, so this is my poor attempt at a tutorial. I actually don't really know how to master this effect so it's still a trial version before I really try some more variations and get it down.
Basically, I used 2 programs. I am fairly certain that Vegas is never used to make .gifs, but I have to improvise and make due with what I got. :) So, go innovation! (?)
Sony Vegas 7.0 and Adobe Photoshop CS4
1. In Vegas, I imported the video I wanted to use. (In this case, it's one of the last scenes from the SPN season 2 finale.)
2. Every segment should have its own layer as shown above.
3. The Pan-Crop tool and the Cookie Cutter (under Video Effects) need to be used to move the scenes around. This is the part that I'm still trying to really get down, so please forgive that I give a very detailed explanation here. Basically, the pan-crop tool allows you focus in on a particular aspect of the image/scene while cookie cutter allows you to position that segment where you would like it (as well as cover up another part of the image that you wouldn't want to show). So, e.g., for me here, I didn't really want the bodies included (mostly because it would take up way too much room). So I used cookie cutter for that.
4. Okay, so obviously, you only want each scene to play one at a time. So that means that they have to follow one after the other in the timeline/layers. BUT if you don't want there to be a big empty black hole in the upper slot while level 2 is playing. → So, you want 3 things: the moving clip (in blue), the screencap of the very first thing you see for the clip (in red), and a screencap of the very last thing you see for the clip (in green).
→ [By the way, I forgot to mark it, but you can take a screencap with Vegas with a little "floppy disk" icon that is conveniently cut off in the image above. But it is located right next to the image of the two papers.]
5. After you get your screencaps, you want to place the "initial" still of the scene before the moving clip and the "final" still of the scene after it and lower their opacity to 50%.
Note how everything begins and ends at the same time. Now render this file as a MOV.
Then we go to Adobe Photoshop CS4.
1. File > Import > Video Frames to Layers. Select the MOV file.
2. In the pop-up window, you want "beginning to end" and I did "Limit to every 3 frames"
3. [Windows > Animation] Make each frame last 0.1 second (vs the default of 0.03).
4. Crop the surrounding black area so only the images remain.
5. You might want to resize the whole image because it's quite big.
6. File > Save for Web and Devices (this makes it a gif). Here you can preview and save it.
And viola!
I hope that helped at all. It probably didn't! *ashamed*