How can I create a gif that plays only once?

when creating an animated gif using imwrite, the result loops continuously no matter what I set LoopCount to be. I'm trying to get it to play only once, so I'm setting LoopCount to "0". Is this a bug?

[Mark Sherstan]

Please post your code!

Answer 1

[Chad Greene]

Use my gif function!

Just type

gif('myfile.gif','LoopCount',1) 

for the first frame

and then

gif

to write each subsequent frame. That's it.

[Aravindh Babu]

I use your function a lot, actually (and I really enjoy it, btw). But because of the way imwrite is set up, you still have to set 'LoopCount' to 0, not 1, to get it to loop once. I just tried setting 'LoopCount' to 1 and when I import the exported GIF into Photoshop, the actual loop count is 2.

Answer 2

[Robert Sweeney]

Here's my function. In the beginning of the routine it is initialized with the first frame and ovwrt = 1. For every subsequent frame, the frame is appended with ovwrt = 0.

function make_gif(fig, ovwrt, filename)

frame = getframe(fig);
im = frame2im(frame);
[imind,cm] = rgb2ind(im,256);

if ovwrt
    imwrite(imind,cm,filename,'gif', 'Loopcount', int8(0), 'DelayTime', 0.1);
else
    imwrite(imind,cm,filename,'gif', 'WriteMode', 'append', 'DelayTime', 0.1); 
end

Answer 3

[Mark Sherstan]

Using the code found from here I can confirm that if I use 0 as the 'loopcount' argument it plays once and inf it keeps repeating. Passing the information from your script to the function something is being lost.

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',0); 
      else 
          imwrite(imind,cm,filename,'gif','WriteMode','append'); 
      end 
  end

So I modified the above and got the following script and function which is very close to yours. Again something must just be getting lost between your function and elsewhere but hopefully this helps:

Script:

h = figure;
axis tight manual
filename = 'testinf.gif';

for n = 1:0.5:5
    
    x = 0:0.01:1;
    y = x.^n;
    plot(x,y) 
    drawnow 
      
    make_gif(h, n, filename)
    
end

Function:

function make_gif(fig, ovwrt, filename)

frame = getframe(fig);
im = frame2im(frame);
[imind,cm] = rgb2ind(im,256);

if ovwrt == 1 
    imwrite(imind,cm,filename,'gif', 'Loopcount',0); 
else 
    imwrite(imind,cm,filename,'gif','WriteMode','append'); 
end 

Alternatively you can use this function from the file exchange!