Creating animation file from multiple still images

Factual Questions
1

Does anyone have advice on creating a simple animation if given the following:

I have AutoCAD and plan to export multiple image files (.tif or such) showing the growth of a cylinder. So basically I figure I’ll just keep increasing the length of the cylinder each time I create the image file.

I then want to somehow make that collection of images be a movie file that I can load into PowerPoint.

Can anyone recommend an animation software (preferably free) that will do this for me? If it’s easy, then I plan on creating more detailed movies showing a few designs coming together.

2

I know you can do this fairly easily with ffmpeg but their site seems down at the moment. It’s a command line utility, so if you’re looking for something with a GUI, then I’m sure one of the other dopers will think of something.

If you have a bunch of numbered frames such as img0001.jpg, img0002.jpg, … then the command line for ffmpeg would be something like


ffmpeg -r 5 -i img%03d.jpg -y -an output.avi

Where the “5” above the the frame rate in frames per second.

3

ImageMagick is a command line tool that will convert a set of still images to an animated GIF. Animated GIFs are not the best format for movies, but they will work in a pinch (and they can be imported into PowerPoint slides)
PS

4

Nevermind everyone, it looks like iMovie that came with my Mac will be able to do it.

5

…And for the PC crowd, there’s Windows Movie Maker bundled with the Operating System.

6

On a Mac, you can just put a series of images into a folder and open them as a movie with Quicktime

7

Paintshop Pro by JASC can be used to do this. It is cumbersome, and the resulting file is huge, but I’ve done similar things with image captures from SolidWorks.