OS X Screencast to Animated GIF

GIF-Screencast-OSX.md

OS X Screencast to animated GIF

This gist shows how to create a GIF screencast using only free OS X tools: QuickTime and ffmpeg.

Forked from https://gist.github.com/baumandm/1dba6a055356d183bbf7. Updated to facility the usage.

Instructions

Add the following function in your .bash_profile :

function movtogif () {
  tempfile=.mov-to-gif-$(date +"%s").png
  ffmpeg -v quiet -stats -y -i $1 -vf fps=10,palettegen $tempfile
  ffmpeg -v quiet -stats -i $1 -i $tempfile -filter_complex "fps=10,paletteuse" "${1%.mov}.gif"
  rm $tempfile
}

Usage

$ movtogif filename.mov

Dependencies

The conversion process requires the following command-line tools:

• ffmpeg to process the video file

If you use homebrew and homebrew-cask software packages, just type this in:

$ brew install ffmpeg 

Resources

• https://gist.github.com/baumandm/1dba6a055356d183bbf7
• http://superuser.com/questions/556029/how-do-i-convert-a-video-to-gif-using-ffmpeg-with-reasonable-quality/556031#556031
• http://schneems.com/post/41104255619/use-gifs-in-your-pull-request-for-good-not-evil (primary source!)
• http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/16zu7d/use_gifs_in_your_pull_requests_for_good_not_evil/
• http://superuser.com/questions/436056/how-can-i-get-ffmpeg-to-convert-a-mov-to-a-gif#_=_
• http://gnuski.blogspot.ca/2012/06/creating-animate-gif-with-free-software.html