Converting Animated GIF to C64 Commodore Grafix animation

Commodore Grafix (CGFX) is a new RIFF container file format for Commodore 64 graphics, supporting all native and many non-native video modes. It has extensions for matrix (multi-frame) images, for panoramas, 3D models, animations and more.

In this video, I walk through the complete process of finding an animated GIF, splitting it into frames, converting the individual frames to Koala format, and converting and packing the koala files into a package of frame data. Then I move the frame package over to my Ultimate64 via an SD Card. There, I show how the CGFX Creator tool (which comes included with C64 OS v1.04) can be used to create the CGFX headers. Using a CBM DOS command we concatenate the headers and the frame data together into a new CGFX file.

After that, I show us boot up into C64 OS, and open the new file from File Manager. It opens in the Image Viewer Application, which loads the frame data into the REU (RAM Expansion Unit), and then we get to play it back in all its 8-bit, 16-color glory.

Checkout the recent blog post, https://c64os.com/post/imageformats for a deep dive into what the CGFX format can do, and how it is structured.