How to Make Animated GIFs from Videos

I'm sure we've all had our days when we visit a particular website or forum and go green in envy when we see posts or users with fancy animated GIFs ripped from a video. If you ever wished you wanted to learn how to create those GIFs, you've come to the right place.

In this tutorial, I'll explain the process of making an animated GIF from a particular scene in a video. It's not as hard as most people imagine it to be, so I'm sure by the time you're through reading this, you'll be able to whip out those GIFs at anytime of your choosing too.

What you will need?
A software that will extract frames from a video, like VirtualDub or KMPlayer, and an image editing software that will put it together. For this tutorial, I'll be using KMPlayer and Photoshop (any Photoshop that comes without Image Ready will do - basically CS3 and above). You can also use free GIF makers like Beneton Movie GIF, but Photoshop usually gives out the best quality so that's what I use.

That's the video I'll be using, the Final Fantasy Versus XIII trailer that was shown at Square Enix's Production One press conference, earlier this month. Anyway, let's get a move on.

Frame Extraction
Play the video in KMPlayer and pause it a couple of seconds before the scene you want a GIF of starts. Once you've done that, right click on the video and go to Capture -> Frame Extract. You can also hit Ctrl + G on the keyboard if that's what you want.

 
You'll be greeted by a window with a few options. The image below shows the optimum settings for a good quality GIF that's doesn't have too big a filesize. If you're planning on making a shorter GIF that needs to be very smooth, you can lower the Frames to Extract option to 2 every # frames, but be warned it substantially increases the file size.

 
Once you're ready to extract the frames, click on Start in the window and then resume the video. It will start extracting the frames according to the parameters you've set and when you've crossed the scene you want as a GIF, stop the video and close the Frame Extraction window. You can even close KMPlayer itself if you want, because its work is done.

There's one little thing left to do though. Earlier, I mentioned that you'd need to pause the video a couple of seconds before the scene you want, so that you inadvertently don't miss a second or two of the video. However, those frames have also been extracted, so browse to the folder you specified and clear out the un-needed frames that were captured from the video.

Important: Make sure you have only the images you want to use in your GIF in that folder - no other files, folders or images.