Slowing animated gifs

[Puma]

Ok, here my project:

I'm making an html page for my desktop that displays an animated gif from the web (one that is periodically updated... I use a meta-refresh to get the new gif from the server every so often). When it's first downloading, it runs perfectly: my download speed matches how fast I'd like the gif to run... fairly slowly changing the frame about every second (yeah, it's a pretty big gif).

The problem:

Once the entire gif is downloaded to the cache, it gets up to the speed specified by the file which is more like 10fps. The actal file from the server is out of my control, but I need some way to change its speed once downloaded. Since the native speed is embeded in the gif file, the only way I can think of to change it would be to use a script to save each frame as an induvidual file (I have no clue how) and then loop through them manually at my specified speed (this I could do on my own). Can someone show me how to go through and save the induvidual frames? Or can anyone think of a better way to slow the animation?

[Stryker]

Couldn't you just save the .gif file and make whatever modifications you want? It would probably be the easiest solution.

Do you have a program such as Adobe ImageReady that you can use to modify timing of the frames?

[Puma]

As I said above, the .gif is periodically updated, so I can't just change it once... I need a solution that automatically fixes new gifs as they come in.

[Statica]

You could try using:

PHP Code:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="CACHE-CONTROL" CONTENT="NO-CACHE">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="PRAGMA" CONTENT="NO-CACHE"> 


to prevent the gif from being cached.

[mairving]

Tis the problem with animated gif's. I would forget about the gif and go flash instead. You can do so much more with flash.

[Puma]

Yeah, I thought about that Statica, but I don't want to be downloading this thing 24/7... it would be a little harsh on the server since the gif is about 20MB. Besides, it would suck up my bandwidth.

mairving, I don't know if you read my original post, but the gif is out of my control. I can't change formats or anything... it's just the way it is and I might just give up if no one has any suggestions for acutally doing what I asked about. I have some experience in java, so that's my target language if I were to write some applet to do what I want.