what do you use to make your gifs?
instagiffer!!!! i use it on my desktop computer, you can either use the built in screen recorder on it, or upload a video, which i prefer doing because i can do the whole video easier that way.
i'm gonna just start going through a bunch of things about it and how i use it now in case anybody tries it out
so like there's this thing:
that you'll want to uncheck if you plan on making multiple gifs because it will save over the first gif you make if left checked.
wait i'll load a video into it so i can get to more options
using an interview one because i like seeing his face in it, so okay
excuse me blocking out the file path, ignore that
so you can go to "view frames in explorer" which opens up the folder where the program stores all of the frames it extracted
there's the delete frames one, which brings up this
delete even frames only will just delete every other frame, cutting the amount in half if the gif is too big in size
i usually just delete frames from the extraction folder, but this is quick if i do want to cut them down to half.
manual crop brings this up
so like you can either use that, which is more precise, or drag the red blocks on the corners of this part
like
and you can click and hold the black block in the middle to drag the whole selection around
and as it says on the top, if you doubleclick on the whole scene, it will delete a frame
rightclick to preview doesn't work for me, i prefer to just click and hold the arrows where it shows the frame amount at the bottom because it shows kind of how it'll look and the speed changes when you change
^ this, which i actually always have set to -1 because 0 always seems a little too fast. things are always slightly faster when uploaded to tumblr too for some reason. i crank it all the way down to -10 for most of my slowed gifs and the sped up ones i usually have on either 0 or 1
so i also always put quality up to 100 and i always put smoothness as high as it'll let me
which also increases the amount of frames it'll load up, but i prefer to make multiple gifs of one scene than to have one choppy not-smooth looking gif. but sometimes i delete some frames if some look close enough to the last frame before it and the gif turns out just a tiny bit above tumblr's size limit
^ effects panel! you can mess around with these however you want, i never use anything from this besides enhance. sometimes that can mess with certain videos(usually newer ones) too, so if it looks really weird then i'll try it again without enhance and see if it's better.
the captions one, for subtitles and things:
that brings up this, you can mess with things and figure out where , when and how you want the text
the frame size slider, i normally have to make a few test gifs to adjust it to a good size:
lately i've just been uploading videos into a video editor (VSDC) and then saving them again before uploading to instagiffer because it always saves everything about the same size(and then i can fix some other things at the same time if needed), so my usual is 45 or 50, but without doing that, it'll probably be different for different videos
and since i almost always do every scene of videos, i go 2 minutes at a time, so i set this:
to 120
it takes a bit for it to extract all the frames
when that's done, i make sure i have another folder for storage somewhere on my computer, doesn't matter where it is, it can just be on the desktop or something. i take all of the extracted frames from the first folder and put them into the storage folder.
i also always have a THIRD folder up of where i'm saving the gifs to
so the whole thing looks like this:
so when i do scenes, the extraction folder and the storage folder go like
wait i'll find a shorter scene
okay so i can just keep all of the frames in that side > and
drag all frames from one scene like this^
over to
< this side
and then click one of these arrow buttons
and it will load up the frames that are in that folder
so now it's just that one 35 frame scene in there
always check the first and last frames before making the gif to make sure the scenes didn't bleed together
i gotta. fix that crop thing i did, wait
that's better
anyway make sure you choose a save location for your gifs here
so i make gifs of everything in the storage folder by dragging over one scene at a time, then when i get to the end of theee. how many frames was that, 3600
okay when i get to the end of that, it usually cuts off in the middle of a scene, so i have to go ahead by 1 minute
so i put a 1 here
it extracts the frames starting at 1 minute into the video
this is where the last ones one ended at frame 3600
so i have to find where the same scene is in the newly extracted frames
1800 would be where 3600 ended, so there's the start of the scene:
i delete everything else in both folders besides the frames of that one scene until i'm done with it, then i go to minute 2
there are some frames of the last part of that scene at the start of minute 2, so i delete those and start at the next part after it
so those 60 frames can be deleted.
and then i gif everything until i get to the end of those two minutes, repeat this process and so on until the video ends. two minutes at a time.
and this is how i mass produce gifs. just keep dragging frames from one folder to another, run it through the gif program, upload to tumblr, repeat
i like to have that third folder of where the gifs are saved just in case one is too big and i need to delete it before trying again, if i make multiple versions of one gif(different speeds, with or without certain bits, etc) i'll rename it things like, if it autosaves the first gif of a certain scene as insta001(it saves them like insta, insta001, insta002, etc), i'll rename a slow version of it "insta001(slow)" so the files are less confusing when i need to upload everything, i can just upload the normal numbered ones into a set and then save the different speed ones for their own posts without having to check each file to make sure it's the right one (i have been known to be confused from time to time)
there's also a fun loop thing here:
i haven't used loop in a long time but i remember having fun with it
ALSO i always like to have a screenshot of all of my settings on instagiffer in case a bug happens and it crashes or if i need to stop and take a break until another time so i know exactly where i left off, what frame size i had, what scene it was on, etc. i just take a quick screenshot of the program and the folders on side of it so i can see the way it was when i stopped last and i keep it in the same folder the gifs are saved in.
you can also upload already made gifs to edit them, or add pictures or anything, but if it's not the right size, something might look a bit squished.
there are things that will force you to restart instagiffer too, like if you make a gif annnnd
if you have this on
(accidentally posted while i'm still answering this oops, editing it still)
and it shows
this when the gif is done
and then you DELETE THE GIF from the folder before you click "OK"
then everything will be grayed out and it won't work, you have to restart it and load the video back up
OKAY I'LL STOP HERE since i didn't mean to post this already, it made me panic a little
