clip2gif

Note: ffmpeg (v4.4.1 or greater) is required in order to use this package. You can download ffmpeg from https://ffmpeg.org/download.html or install with Homebrew brew install ffmpeg

Why?

This tool was created to quickly share screen recordings as an animated GIFs within team collaboration tools like Slack and WebEx. Animated GIFs can also compliment changes within a Github or Bitbucket pull request.

How?

Under the hood this tool will execute ffmpeg commands to first create a compressed version of the original clip which is used to then produce the most optimized animated GIF possible. (The compressed version of the original clip can be also be saved with the --saveClip flag, otherwise only the GIF will be created).

Tested with .mov and .mp4 files. clip2gif can reduce an MP4 to 90% from its original file size and MOV files down 80% and still maintain excellent quality.

Sample

The GIF below was created with clip2gif from a Camtasia screen recording. It was a 40 second clip sped up 2x to create a 20 second clip.

Install

  npm i -g clip2gif@latest

Usage

The following will create a smaller file size version of the original file and create a 30s animated GIF.

  clip2gif /folder/sample.mp4 -s 2.5

Options

option	description
-h, --help	Display this usage guide.
--src, --file string	Path to source file you want to convert to GIF
-s, --speed string	Used to speed up video, default is 1x. Ex: for 2.5x playback use 2.5
-o, --outputDir string	Output directory. Default will be the same directory as source file.
-e, --saveClip	Save compressed version of the orginal source.
-y, --clipOnly	Create the compressed clip only, GIF will NOT be created.
-p, --protect	Protect will prevent existing files from being overwritten. By default files ARE overwritten.

Notes

Keep your clips as sort as possible, animated GIF aren't suppose to be long.