You must have seen those funny little video clips on different websites, that seem like a picture, but are actually tiny video clips (kind a like a “Picdeo”). These are called GIFs, although they function like a Picture (without any play/stop button), but they are actually tiny video clips with added effects.
If you are wondering how you can create a GIF of your own (why wouldn’t you? They are damn hilarious), then there are many ways you can make your own GIF using different tools.
Although, there are many free and paid tools that will let you make a GIF out of a YouTube Video or even provide you a proper environment to make a GIF out of a set of pictures or a Video Such as, makeagif or Giffing Tool. However, these tools are mostly limited and you won’t be able to control everything on your own will.
In this tutorial, we are going to use a tool called GIMP, which is an open source completely free alternative to Photoshop. It might not be as powerful as Photoshop, but it is good enough to let you do everything you want with your GIF.
Get your GIF Clip
To get started, you need to get a video clip from which you will make a GIF. A GIF is suppose to be a short (1-5 seconds) funny or amazing part of a video that should entertain people, preferably, a one that could repeat an action without breaking the illusion (like the one below).
You will have to first extract the specific scene from a video in order to create a GIF out of it. For this purpose, you will need a Tool that could cut a portion from any video. We are going to use the tool Online Video Cutter that will let you cut portion of a video online by uploading the video.
You can also use a program such as, movavi to cut a portion of a video right from your PC.
All you have to do is access the website and upload (maximum 500MB) the Video by clicking on “Open file”. Once uploaded you can just cut the specific portion of the video and download the extracted portion.
Tip: Just to make sure you get the right frames of the portion of the video, leave 2 seconds on both start and end of the Video. We can get the required portion of the Video when we will use GIMP.
Get GIMP on your Computer
You have to install GIMP on your computer along with a GIMP Animation Package. The basic GIMP doesn’t support animation, so you will have to download and install GIMP Animation Package as well.
Now the problem is, it is not that easy to install GIMP and GIMP Animation Package. However, we will try our best to provide all the required details to make it easier for you to install both the programs. If you are stuck in any step or can’t seem to get it right, feel free to comment below and we would love to help.
To download and install GIMP, you will need a Torrent app. For this purpose, uTorrent is a good tool, but you can use any torrent program you like. Once the program is installed, Download GIMP and it will be automatically downloaded using the torrent program.
To install GIMP Animation Package in GIMP you will have to download the GAP 2.6 and install all the Plugins in GIMP.
Tip: The download link for GAP 2.6 is located at the right side of the main Picture. Finding the download link has been quite an issue for many people, hope you get it right.
To download GAP 2.6 and install the Plugins, you can refer to this step by step instructions by Andrew Bonnington.
Create your GIF using GIMP
Launch GIMP, in the interface you will see many editing options on which you can just click to reveal the drop down menu. Click on “Video” option, if it is not there, then it means you didn’t installed the GIMP Animation Package properly. You can either repeat the process to see what you have done wrong or let us know in the comments below and we will help.
From the drop down menu that opens up when you click on “Video”, hover your mouse over “Split Video into Frames” and from the side menu click on “Extract Videorange”(it’s “Video Range” not “Vide Orange”).
A new window will open, click on the button with three horizontal dots “…” located at the top right corner of the Window. In there, navigate to the area where you downloaded the “Portion of the Video” (that we extracted above) and double click on the Video to select it or click on “OK”.
Now, click on “Video Range” located under the “…” button and you will see a preview of the video on the right side.
In the preview, you can check the frames which you would like to use. In simple words, you can now precisely cut the exact portion of the video which you would like to use, by using exact starting and ending frame.
Use the tiny up and down arrows at the end of the first field to navigate between each frame. Once you see the exact frame from where you would like to start your GIF, memorize it. Now, move forward and see the exact frame on which you would like to end the GIF and memorize it as well.
Come back to “Extract Videorange” panel again, and enter the Starting Frame number in the field that says “From Frame”. After that, enter the ending frame in field that says “To Frame”.
Check the Checkbox next to “Create only one multilayer Image” and hit “OK” under the Preview panel. You will see your Gif in GIMP, where you can also edit each frame as you may like.
Save Your created GIF
To save it, you need to click on “File” and from the drop down menu click on “Export as”.
A new window will open, there you can specify a name and set the destination where the GIF will be saved.
You will also have to select file type, just click on “Select File Type” located at the bottom left corner of the screen and you will see all the formats in which you can save. Scroll down and click on “GIF image” and then click on “Export”.
From the next window, check the checkbox next to “As animation” and click on “Export” again. Your GIF file will be saved in the specified directory.
If you are having trouble viewing the GIF file, you can also download GIF viewer software, such as GIF Viewer.
If you have anything to share or need help with any of the processes above, let us know in the comments below.