This short tutorial shows how to make an animated GIF with VLC, a free popular video player and GIMP, a free popular image manipulator. Using VLC we can take a short video clip and separate it into it's individual frames. We then load the frames into GIMP and convert them into an animated GIF.
You can download VLC from Here Make sure to download the right version for your operating system. For example, Windows, Mac or Linux. After downloading and installing VLC:
1. Start VLC. Go to the View tab and click Advanced Controls from the menu. This shows more controls at the bottom of the VLC window.
2. Next, open the video clip in vlc where you want to extract a certain scene. Remember you don't want much more than 5 seconds for a GIF.
3. Now put the slider to where you want to begin the recording. This will be the beginning of your video clip.
4. Click the red record button and click play on the video.
5. Play the video until where you want to end. Make it short. Press the Record button again to end it. The clip will be saved to C:\Users\Username\Videos
1. Launch VLC again and go to 'Preferences' under 'Tools'. (You may have to click 'Tools' several times before 'Preferences' shows up.) Under the 'Show Settings' at the bottom of the window, click the button with option 'All'.
2. Now select 'Video' from the left column of the Advanced Preferences window and expand Filters.
3. Click Scene Filter.
4. In the Scene Filter window, set the image format, for example png. You can just leave the Image width and height at the default -1. You can leave the 'Filename prefix' -scene- or whatever you want. For the 'Directory path prefix', this will be the directory location on your computer where the frames will go, make sure to use the 'backward slash' in the path name, when denoting which directory to save the frames in, for example:
c:\Videos
Under 'Recording ratio' enter a number that represents the ratio of frames per total frames. For example '10' will give you every 10th frame. '1' will give you every frame in the clip.
5. Click the Save button and go back to the Advanced Preferences.
6. Expand Videos and click Filters.
7. Click on 'Scene video filter' to process the video stream.
8. Click Save
9. Now close VLC and restart it, find the video clip you extracted and play it. The frames will be saved in the directory you denoted.
When you are finished make sure to unclick the 'Scene video filter' or you will be creating frames for every video you play!
You can download GIMP from Here Make sure to download the right version for your operating system. For example, Windows, Mac or Linux. After downloading and installing GIMP, run GIMP and do the following:
1. Click on File in the menu bar and then click on Open as Layers
2. Go to the directory you created with VLC where the saved frames are and highlight the frames you want in your GIF. These should all be in order all ready. Click Open.
3. Go to Image in the menu bar and click Mode.
4. Choose indexed (instead of RGB) and set maximum number of colors to 127.
5. Click Convert in the Indexd Color Cnversion window. Wait for it to finish.
6. Now go to Filters in the menu bar and click Animation.
7. Click on optimize for GIF.
8. Now click on File in the menu bar and click on Export as.
9. Give your file a name and go to the bottom of the page and click on 'Select File Type (by extension)'. Scroll down and click on GIF image. Click Export.
10. In the next window, check the 'As animation' box and click Export.
11. Find the GIF where you exported it to and run it, that's it! Enjoy!