Convert a video to a dynamic GIF image in Linux

Although it was once regarded as an outdated art form, dynamic GIF images are now recovering. If you haven't noticed that many online sharing and social network websites are beginning to support dynamic GIF images, such as Tumblr, Flickr, Google +, and Facebook. Because of its ease of consumption and sharing, GIF animation has become part of mainstream Internet culture.

Therefore, some of you may wonder how such dynamic GIF images can be generated. There are various online or offline tools dedicated to generating dynamic GIF images. Another option is to disable existing video clips when creating a dynamic GIF image. In this tutorial, I will describe how to convert a video file into a dynamic GIF image on Linux.

As a more useful example, let me show you how to convert a YouTube video into a dynamic GIF image.

Step 1: Download the YouTube video

First, download a YouTube video you want to convert. You can use the youtube-dl tool to save a YouTube video as an MP4 file. Suppose you save your favorite YouTube video as "funny.mp4 ". (For those in the wall, please ignore YT and go to the good guys to find an MP4 ,;-})

Step 2: extract the video frame from the video

Next, install FFmpeg on Linux. I will use this tool to decompress the video frame from the video.

The following commands extract independent video frames and save them as GIF images. Make sure that the output file format such as ("out000004d.gif") is used. In this way, the independent frames are properly named and saved.

Ffmpeg-t <duration>-ss 
For example, if you want to extract the input video frame, starting from 10th seconds, every 5 seconds, run the following command.
$ ffmpeg -t 5 -ss 00:00:10 -i funny.mp4 out%04d.gif 
After FFmpeg is completed, you will see a group of created GIF files named "out [\ d1_0000.gif ".
Step 3: Merge video frames into a dynamic GIF
The following step combines a single GIF file into a dynamic GIF image. Therefore, you can use ImageMagick.
First, if you do not have one, install ImageMagick on Linux.
Convert-delay <frames> x <frames per second>-loop 0 out * gif <output file>
In this command, "-delay" is an option to control the dynamic speed. This option indicates the number of seconds to wait before the next frame is displayed: Number of frames/number of frames per second. The "-loop 0" option indicates an infinite loop of the animation. If you want to, you can specify "-loop N" to make the animation repeat for only N times.
For example, to generate a dynamic GIF image with 20 frames per second and with numerous loops, run the following command.
$ convert -delay 1x20 -loop 0 out*.gif animation.gif 
Step 4 (optional): reduce the size of dynamic GIF
The last step (optional) is to reduce the size of the generated GIF file by using the GIF optimization function of ImageMagick.
Use the following command to reduce the GIF size.
convert -layers Optimize animation.gif animation_small.gif 
Now you are ready to share your GIF images on your social network. Below is a GIF sample image that I generated from a cute YouTube video.
Enjoy the fun of technology! :-)