What is GIF, and How to convert video to GIF?
Do you often use GIFs while online chatting and messaging with your friends? Have you ever thought of making GIFs on your own? Is it easy to create GIFs? Not sure where to start? Check out this article: “What is GIF, and How to convert video to GIF?” to know how easy it is to make GIFs.
GIFs are now everywhere on the internet
Short, eye-catching, and hilarious, GIFs are everywhere on the internet. GIFs are so popular that they are even considered an essential part of communicating on social media. These days, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook users use GIFs so widely, so frequently.
As there are countless GIFs available on the internet, it’s so easy to find them through search engines. But, creating ones of your own that show off your personality seems a lot more impressive, right?
The good news is that there are more than enough ways to create GIFs. One of them is to turn a video into GIFs. Of course, in today’s post, we are going to share with you a step-by-step guide on how to convert video to GIF. But first, let’s check out what a GIF is and what makes GIFs so popular.
What is a GIF?
See more: https://youtu.be/VNSDEkNH0dk
What is a GIF?
GIF stands for Graphical Interchange Format. It’s an image format invented in June 1987 by a software writer named Steve Wilhite who was looking for a solution to animate images in the minimum file size.
GIF is a lossless image file format that supports both animated and static images. Simply, you can think of GIF as a series of images or a very short soundless video that loops continuously. We don’t need to press any button to play a GIF.
That’s about what a GIF is. Before exploring how to convert video to GIF, why don’t we spend one more minute learning how advantageous a GIF is and why use a GIF instead of a full video.
GIF stands for Graphical Interchange Format
How advantageous a GIF is?
Apparently, Internet users rather watch a some-second GIF than a 1-minute video. Do you know that Facebook launched a GIF search engine for Messenger in 2015? In 2016, a similar search engine was also rolled out to Twitter.
It’s no coincidence that GIFs are more and more popular, though this file format was once considered unprofessional. Here are a few big advantages of GIFs:
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GIFs are very short in length. GIFs are often short, they rarely last more than 5 seconds. This way, GIFs seem so perfect for grabbing the attention of other people.
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GIFs are relatively small in file size. Not only are GIFs short in length, but they also have relatively small file sizes as compared to videos and even some other image formats.
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Easy to make. It’s simple and easy to make GIFs. As mentioned previously, there are more than enough ways that you can use to create a GIF within a few seconds and steps. Checking out the third part of this post, then you will know how to convert video to GIF on your own.
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GIFs are more interesting to human eyes than static images. GIFs add movement, motion, and context to your content. When used the right way, GIFs can make it much easier for your content to shine in blog posts, ads, emails, social media feeds, and more.
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GIFs help add more emotion. Using GIFs is a very good way to express emotions. The following GIFs tell you how easy it is to show your emotions with GIFs.
Happy Tom and Jerry GIF (Cre: giphy.com) Rce: https://youtu.be/Bt7fMqwpamA
Sad GIF by Pokémon (Cre: giphy.com) Rce: https://youtu.be/AT0qVXmTTDI
Well, it’s worth noting that though GIFs offer several benefits, they also have a few drawbacks such as the limited color depth. The maximum color depth of a gif is just 256 bit, which is quite low in comparison to other image formats like JPEGs or PNGs. Due to that, GIFs can look blocky.
How to convert video to GIF?
Now is time for us to learn how to turn a video into a GIF or some GIFs. But first, we want to remind you that in order to have a great GIF, you will need a great video first. Here are 2 easy step-by-step guides on how to convert video to GIF, using 2 common online tools of GIPHY and MakeaGIF.
Turning a video into a GIF using Giphy GIF Maker
GIPHY’s GIF maker is a super fast and extremely easy-to-use tool to make a GIF, using both video and images. Following are steps to convert a video to a GIF using Giphy’s GIF maker.
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Go to https://giphy.com/create/gifmaker. Or you can also visit giphy.com ⇨ Choose “Create”. Note that you will need to log in to upload to Giphy! Giphy GIF Maker allows users to make a GIF using the video URL from different video hosting platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, GIPHY, and more. Of course, you can also upload your own file video here.
How to convert video to GIF using GIPHY GIF Maker: Visit giphy.com ⇨ click Choose “Create”
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Upload the video
You can upload the video you want to use either by entering its URL (if it’s a video from a video hosting service) or choosing a file from your computer.
Upload your video here
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Make your GIF
After uploading successfully the video that you want to convert a GIF from, then it’s time to create your GIF. As you can see in the following picture, you need to use the two sliders to adjust the Duration and Start Time. Note that your GIF can be up to 15 seconds in length.
Here, we want our GIF to last 2.2 seconds, and its start time is from the 37th second of the uploaded video.
Use the two sliders to adjust the Duration and Start Time
After that, select “Continue to Decorate”. You can easily add Caption, Stickers, Filters, and Draw as well as opt for Style and Animation that you would like to have.
When you are ready, scroll down to the bottom and choose “Continue to Upload”. Right here, you can enter the source URL and tags and for your new GIF. You can also choose to open it to the public or not. Click to “Upload to GIPHY” to finish.
That’s how to convert video to GIF using GIPHY GIF maker. Let’s move on to the next paragraph to see how to do so using the MakeaGIF tool.
That’s so easy and simple, right?
See more: https://youtu.be/X8QVrJYCjNk
Turning a video into a GIF using MakeaGIF
MakeaGIF is also a quick online tool, allowing its users to quickly create GIFs from pictures (Pictures to GIF), YouTube (YouTube to GIF), uploaded video (video to GIF), and more. As compared to GIPHY GIF maker, MakeaGIF enables users to create slightly more sophisticated GIFs.
Here’s how to convert video to GIF using MakeaGIF:
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Sign in your account on https://makeagif.com/ ⇨ Click to “Create a GIF” ⇨ Select “Video to GIF” if you want to make a GIF from your own video or “YouTube to GIF” if you want to use a YouTube video.
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Enter the YouTube URL that you would like to create a GIF from (if you choose “YouTube to GIF”), or click to upload your own video file (if you choose “Video to GIF” - note that you can still enter an URL here).
Enter the YouTube URL here
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Click to “Continue to editing” to start creating your GIF. Right there, you can select the start time, GIF length, GIF speed, and Quality of the GIF. Note that your GIF can be up to 10 seconds in length.
You can also add stickers, tags, choose a category for the new GIF, and display your GIF as a Public gif, unlisted gif, or private gif.
How to convert video to GIF: You can select the start time for the GIF, GIF length, GIF speed, and Quality of the GIF here
Click to “Create your Publishing” and then “Create your GIF”.
Wrapping up
These are how to turn a video into a GIF. As you can see, it’s so easy and simple to make a GIF from a video using these online tools, isn’t it? With this post, we also introduced to you the pros of using GIFs as well as what makes this image format so popular. Hope that you found this post “What is GIF, and How to convert video to GIF?” useful and interesting.
See also: How to watch videos offline on YouTube?
Sources:
biteable.com/blog/make-gif-video/
wix.com/blog/2017/11/gifs-in-social-media/
connectusfund.org/6-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-animated-gifs
