Generating terminal gifs on OS X the free way

README.md

Didn't work any of this out, I just stuck things together that I found on the web

First, install the things:

brew install imagemagick
brew install ffmpeg

Then, I have a small (600px wide) iTerm window with a big font. Load Quicktime, and record screen (just the area of the terminal)

Trim and save the mov somewhere (lets say ~/Documents/term.mov)

Then, do:

cd ~/Documents
mkdir movanim
cd movanim

# This will render the mov to individual pngs (at 10fps) at a
# width of 500px (which is approximately the size twitter shows them as)
ffmpeg -i ../term.mov -vf scale=500:-1 -r 10 ./ffout%4d.png

# Then this will convert the pngs to a gif (8ms delay between frames loop forever)
# and optimise it as best as it can (the -layers flag)
convert -delay 8 -loop 0 -layers Optimize ffout*.png animation.gif

mov2gif.sh

#!/bin/bash

if [ $# -eq 1 ]
then
    WORKING_DIR="$1-stills"
    echo "-------------------"
    echo "mov2gif here we go!"
    echo "-------------------"
    echo "Creating temporary files"
    mkdir $WORKING_DIR
    touch $LOG
    echo "Outputting video stills"
    ffmpeg -i $1 -vf scale=500:-1 -r 10 "$WORKING_DIR/%4d.png"
    echo "Gluing stills back together"
    convert -delay 8 -loop 0 -layers Optimize "$WORKING_DIR/*.png" "$1.gif"
    echo "Cleaning up"
    rm -r $WORKING_DIR
    echo "--> $.gif"
else
    echo "Usage: ./mov2gif.sh <video file path>"
fi