This article is about how to turn the .mov file recorded using Mac into a .gif file using ffmpeg and imagemagick.
Installation
We are going to install two script packages: ffmpeg and imagemagick .
ffmpeg enables us to convert a .mov file into frames of image files.
imagemagick enables us to select images and turn them into a .gif file.
I am using Mac, so I am going to use brew install to install the above packages.
1$ brew install ffmpeg 2$ brew install imagemagick
Convert .mov into frames of images
Now we can start the conversion.
Select a .mov file, and convert it into frames of .png files.
Specify where the output images should go, in this example, I am going to put them into a directory called output , while the images will be named output_%3d.png , by assigning %03d, I am telling ffmpeg to give my output images index, eg: output_001.png , output_002.png …etc.
1# syntax 2$ ffmpeg -i [INPUT_FILE.mov] -vf "fps=[ASSIGN_A_INTEGER_HERE]" ./output/[OUTPUT_FILE_NAME_%03d.[FILE_EXTENSION]]
In the above script, -i infers to “input file”, -vf infers to “video frame” and fps infers to “frame per second”.
1# example 2$ ffmpeg -i movie.mov -vf "fps=15" ./output/output_%03d.png
So, in the above example, the fps is 15, while the movie file is 5 seconds long, the output images count should be 15*5 = 75 frames in total.
Convert images into GIF
Select all the images in the directory, use Imagemagick to turn them into a GIF.
1# syntax 2$ convert -delay 10 -loop 0 ./output/[TARGET_FILES].[FILE_EXTENSION] ./output/result.gif
In the above script, the -deley specifies how many milliseconds a frame should display, while the -loop specifies how many times the GIF should loop, 0 means forever.
1# example 2$ convert -delay 10 -loop 0 ./output/output*.png ./output/result.gif
Now the GIF should be successfully created!