LET'S MAKE SOME GIFS

Alrighty kiddos, let’s make some gifs today!

PART ONE: GETTING THE VIDEO

Today, I’ll be using a clip from Misono’s VS.  When you choose a video, make sure it is fun and colorful! (For example, use Aya Hirano’s Super Driver rather than MONstar. If you choose something too dark or too monochrome, it is not as fun as a gif.) 

To download a video, make sure you have RealPlayer.  If you don’t, it’s available here: http://www.real.com/

After you download Real, you can download any video for free.  Just scroll over the video, and a little “Download This Video” option should appear.  Click on that, and you’ll see a box with other videos you have downloaded!

what a cutie pie!

I love colorful music videos

Next, to get the clips you want, you’ll have to open the video trimmer.  This came with the Real download, so just search for it on your computer.  Once you open it, go to “RealPlayer Downloads” in “My Videos” and click on the video you want to make a gif.

I have a lot of videos waiting to make gifs with

Now you can trim little clips of the video anyway you want!  You grab the two gray-dotted bars on either side of the playstrip, and move them to get the exact clips you want.  For my gifs, I make the length of the clip anyway from 1 to 5 seconds long. Any bigger and your gif will not play without loads of quality cuts. Now just save your trim in a folder with the name of the set of gifs! I call this one “MISONO VS” because that’s the name of the video. 

Misono and Misono!

Hide and go seek

PART TWO: MAKING THE GIF

So now that you have all of your clips save, you have to convert them from .flv to .wmv, or anything compatible with the movie to gif program I use.

To do so, open the RealPlayer Converter, which was also included in the Real download.

I have no clue what a Create Zen Vision is

Select all of the trims you have made, and then click the green start button.

Operation start! ~Yurippe

Wow, it converts them so fast~!

All of them were converted in about a minute

Now, open up MovieToAniGIF, which you can get here:http://www.evanolds.com/movtogifsimple.html

Now, on the screen, choose “Open Movie File.”  Choose the clip you want to be a gif. 

So many clips

Go “Save Frames.”  Always save at 50%.  You can always resize in GIMP.

Wouldn't let me upload the full version.
This one just has the 50% choice selected

For convenience, save in the same folder you chose the movie from.  Afterwards, you can move the gif into your gifs folder.  Normally, you would title them, but for convenience sakes, they will keep their numbers this time.

Now, you have all of your gifs!

 (Typically, at this point I delete the videos. I won’t have a need for them anymore when I have the gifs, but that’s up to you)

PART THREE: MAKING THEM PERFECT!

You may have some awkward frames in your gif, considering the trimmer isn’t perfect.  Here is how to get rid of those.

You have to download GIMP, which like all the other programs, if free and can be found here: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

Now, in GIMP, File>Open>TITLE OF THE GIF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR

You may have to play around with folders.

Look at all these gifs!
Now that you’ve opened the gif, scale it to your preferred size.  I suggest no more than 250 width-wise, just for optimization’s sake.  This option can be found in Image>Scale Image

I love this option so much

GIMP will automatically scale the other the other axis, so you don’t have to do any math.

I hate math, good thing this does it for you!

Now, in the layers, you’ll notice there is a layer for each frame in your gif.  Now, delete the layers that are useless to the gif.  Just right click the layer and hit Delete Layer.

Bye bye layer!

To check your gif and make sure it’s perfect, go to Filters>Animation>Playback. This will show you how the gif looks, so you can find any useless frames.

I ended up deleting eight frames, sometimes, you can erase even more!

Save the gif using the Save As option under File.

Bad title is bad

It will prompt you to save as animation, make sure it is checked, and click export.

Merge visible layers? Why would I do that?!

It will open up another window.  Make sure you have check off Loop Forever.  You add a comment, but I don’t know if these show up or how they do.

I have no clue wtf a GIF comment is

Now you have saved your edited gif!  You can do this for all the other ones.  Yes, gif making is a time consuming process.  If you want to make your gif really big in GIMP it won’t play online, use http://www.gifreducer.com/ to shrink the file size of the gif by eliminating some colors.