OS X Screencast to animated GIF

mov2gif.md

Overview

Following this gist, I decided to create my own tutorial/manual for future reference.

Prerequisites

Before trying to convert anything, you must have the following tools installed:

• QuickTime (to record the video)
• ffmpeg (to process the video file)
• gifsicle (to create and optimise the animated gif)

Instalation

If the previous prerequisites are not met, perform the follwing commands:

# ffmpeg
brew install ffmpeg

# brew-cask (for gifsicle's dependencies)
brew tap phinze/homebrew-cask
brew install brew-cask

# gifsicle (and its dependencies)
brew cask install xquartz
brew install gifsicle

Instructions

Now that everything is ready, let's use it!

1. Record a video with QuickTime (File -> New Screen Recording), and save it as in-mov.
2. Run the following command in the same folder of in.mov: ffmpeg -i in.mov -pix_fmt rgb24 -r 20 -f gif - | gifsicle --optimize=3 --delay=3 > out.gif
3. That's it! You now have an animated out.gif to share.