Seamless video loops (that is, clips that play without a sharp cut when you loop them) are very useful in today’s media oriented world. And it seems like lately, I’ve been having to fight against this obstacle more and more.  It wasn’t too long ago that Page Brooks and I ran into this issue with a project at ACS Technologies. Recently, I had a friend of mine mention, he has some video he’d like to be able to play in a loop, but whenever the video repeats there is a flicker, which he doesn’t like. And I have an idea for doing some Windows Mobile development video, but I want to have a seamless looping video background.

I was taking some garbage to the dump the other day, and I had an epiphany:

 

How to Create Seamless Animation Loops from any Video:

Let’s say you have a video that is represented by the following three frames:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you were to loop this video it wouldn’t look right because there would be a very noticeable flicker when the video moved from the last frame back to the first frame. I’ve made an animated gif to simulate this. It’s a little rough anyway since we are just using three frames, but I think you can get a feel for this issue I am discussing.

Non-seamless Animated Gif Example

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok, now that you understand the issue fully, we can discuss the solution. It’s almost too simple. I’ll admit, you’ll always be able to create seamless animation video loops using this technique, but that doesn’t mean it’ll always be what you need, but for most video “FX” loops this is a great solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seamless Animated Gif Example

Anytime you have video that is time agnostic, not sure what else to call it, then you can use this technique to make a seamless video loop:

Take your video loop, say “video loop 1”, and make a copy of it “video loop 2”. Now take “video loop 2” and reverse it. Combine “video loop 2” to the end of “video loop 1” and you’ll have made “seamless video 1”.