Converts a .mov to an animated .gif.Requires ffmpeg and gifsicle.

readme.md

mov_to_gif.sh

I have been asked quite a few times what I use to make animated gifs in my blog posts and tweets. I have been asked so much that I made it into a pinned post in my G+ profile. And now I got tired of copy-pasting all those commands so I made a script.

Usage

The script accepts two parameters:
-f - Required, the input file to be converted
-o - Optional, path and file where the output will be dumped. If not provided, the output will be named the same as the input, but with a .gif extension

Caveats

Script uses sips, ffmpeg (brew install ffmpeg), and gifsicle (brew install gifsicle). I am no master, in fact, I Googled for each command in this script. So use this at your own risk.

Attribution

Actual commands inspired by this post. Thanks to @gservat for helping when I was stuck.

mov_to_gif.sh

#!/bin/bash
for i in "$@"
do
case $i in
    -f=*|--file=*)
    FILENAME="${i#*=}"

    ;;
    -o=*|--out=*)
    OUTPUT="${i#*=}"

    ;;
    *)
            # unknown option
    ;;
esac
done

# Check we have the required programs to run
for prog in ffmpeg gifsicle sips
do
    type ${prog} >/dev/null 2>&1 || { echo >&2 "ERROR: ${prog} not found"; exit 1; }
done

if [ ! -f "$FILENAME" ]; then
    echo "==================================="
    echo "            ERROR"
    echo "     Input file not found"
    echo "==================================="
    exit 1;
fi

if [ -z ${OUTPUT+x} ]; then 
    echo "==================================="
    echo "            WARNING"
    echo " No output name detected, re-using"
    echo "       input filename."
    echo "==================================="

    OUTPUT=$(basename $FILENAME | cut -d '.' -f 1)
fi

delete_folder() {
    rm -rf "$1"
}

PNGS_DIR=pngs
if [ -d "$PNGS_DIR" ]; then
	delete_folder $PNGS_DIR
fi

# Create PNGs
mkdir pngs
echo "==================================="
echo "         Creating PNGs"
echo "==================================="
ffmpeg -i $FILENAME -r 10 pngs/out%04d.png

GIFS_DIR=gifs
if [ -d "$GIFS_DIR" ]; then
    delete_folder GIFS_DIR
fi

mkdir gifs

echo "==================================="
echo "    Converting PNGs to GIFs"
echo "==================================="

sips -s format gif pngs/*.png --out gifs

# Convert into animated GIF
cd gifs/
echo "==================================="
echo "      Making animated GIF\n"
gifsicle *.gif -w --optimize=3 --delay=3 --loopcount > ../$OUTPUT.gif

# Cleanup
cd ..
delete_folder $PNGS_DIR
delete_folder $GIFS_DIR

echo "            DONE"
echo "     File saved as \"$OUTPUT.gif\""
echo "==================================="