Saturday, July 23, 2011

Youtube video to GIF

Here are the steps that I followed:

1. Download video from Youtube using Chrome's Youtube plugin. It will get downloaded in MP4 format.

2. Convert from MP4 format to MOV using the command (in a Linux/Mac terminal):

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -f mov -vcodec copy -acodec copy output.mov

3. Import the MOV file in Adobe Photoshop using the "File -> Import -> Video Frames to Layers" option and select the section of the video that you want to convert to GIF.

4. Resize to desired size using "Image -> Image Size" option

5. Export as GIF using "File -> Save for Web and Devices" option. Select the required GIF settings and click "Save"

6. If you want to upload to the web: My favorite image sharing website www.imgur.com has 2 MB limit on GIF upload size. For GIFs greater than 2 MB, you can use www.min.us.