Fedora :: Requesting Software Recommendations For Converting Animated GIF To MPEG

I use a commercial finite element code to produce animated GIF files of my calculation results. In case you are interested, the code is COMSOL Multiphysics 4.0a, running on Fedora 13 x86_64. Note that the FEA code only has the option of saving movies as animated GIF files in Linux.

These GIF files tend to be quite large, and although they are adequate for my own use on my local computer system, I wish to convert these files into other standard formats of more manageable size. These smaller files would then be easier to distribute to others or to include in presentations and reports.

I would like to ask for recommendations for either GUI-based video player/conversion applications or command line codes that could, for example, convert from animated GIF files to MPEG files. I would prefer an application that allows for multiple input/output format choices as well as conversion options for changing the playback speed, splicing out a portion of the original animation, etc.