I made a cool little tool to make gifs. Hopefully it's easy enough for everyone to understand.
What you need
If you haven't yet, you will need to install the
Java Runtime Environment:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/ja...d-1377135.html
If you're on 32-bit Windows get: Windows x86 Offline 19.35 MB jre-7u2-windows-i586.exe
If you're on 64-bit Windows get: Windows x64 20.46 MB jre-7u2-windows-x64.exe
If you're on a Mac you already have it, it's part of OS X.
Should be very easy and straightforward to install.
Next,
download one of these zip files:
If you're on 32-bit Windows get:
http://kworb.net/kworbgif32.zip.
If you're on 64-bit Windows get:
http://kworb.net/kworbgif64.zip.
If you're on a Mac get:
http://kworb.net/kworbgifmac.zip. Also, Mac users will have to download ffmpeg separately
here.
Unzip it somewhere on your computer.
How it works
To launch the program, double-click on KworbGIF.jar. The following window should open:
If you're on a Mac, then at the top you have to browse to the ffmpeg file you downloaded.
Now to get started. First you need the video from which you want to get the GIF.
Chrome and
Firefox have extensions that allow you to download from YouTube, usually in .mp4 or .flv format. But most video formats are supported.
Click "Browse..." and select the video.
The output filename will be filled in automatically; same name as the input file but with the GIF extension. You can change this if you want. The GIF will always be saved in the same directory as KworbGIF.jar.
Selecting the part of the video that you want
With "Start time" and "End time" you can select the part of the video that will be used for the GIF.
Use the last field (tenths of a second) for extra accuracy.
Cropping and resizing
First the video is cropped, afterwards it is scaled.
You can crop pixels from any side.
Scaling is done by specifying a constraining width and/or height. If you specify both, then make sure to crop the image appropriately so the image doesn't get squashed (unless that is your intention).
Quality and file size
The default value of "Skip frames" is 0, which means every frame of the video will be used. If this value is 1, then one of every two frames will be used. If it's 2, one of every three frames will be used. Etc. By skipping frames, you can easily reduce the file size.
"Frames per second" determines the speed of the GIF. Increase this for faster playback.
The number of colors is a value between 1 and 256. Lower it to reduce the file size, but it will affect the quality at very low values.
Creating the GIF
Click RUN! and wait for it to finish.
If you're not happy, simply adjust the settings and RUN! it again. It will overwrite the old GIF, unless you specify a different output filename.
Example result:
Good luck and have fun!