How to Make GIFs

[Troublemaker]

I will be making 3 posts in this thread. The first post (this one) will be to repeat the caveats I wrote in the Phase II thread.

The second post will be the short instructions on how to make GIFs. For the vast majority of you, these instructions will suffice, and you'll be off and running.

The third post will be lengthier instructions with some screenshots for those that might be less technologically inclined. I probably won't get around to writing this one until tomorrow. And if it doesn't happen by tomorrow, it won't happen until after Christmas. (And if somebody beats me to it, I won't terribly mind! I'm looking for a post that your beloved elderly parent or grandparent that's not great with computers can use.)

So first, the caveats:

kAzE provides the final question of Phase II:

How do you make GIFs?

This is the final question, and I'm going to answer it in a separate post. Two major caveats right off the bat:

(1) Do not ruin the forum experience for everyone by creating gigantic GIFs. You can see a fledgling giffer's first attempt at transformation in this post of mine. Look how slow that GIF loads. So clunky. (Note: the only reason it might load fast is if you had loaded it before and it's still cached in your browser.) Now it IS higher resolution/quality than the GIFs I've been posting recently, but we always trade resolution for loading speed, especially if there are going to be several of us posting GIFs. I'm going to teach how to make low-res GIFs.

(2) I am an Old Guy making GIFs. I am by no means an expert. There is probably some 14-yr-old King or Queen of Tumblr reading this board who will laugh at how stupid my instructions are, and they might be able to suggest a much better way of doing things. If so, by all means, please do chime in and teach this Old Guy some new tricks.

That linked example GIF of Chase's blocked shot, when downloaded to a computer, is 11 megabytes big.

In my next post, I will show how to make GIFs that are < 4 megabytes when downloaded to a computer. That's the size we should be aiming for.

[Troublemaker]

The Short Instructions on How To Make GIFs

Let's say you're watching Duke play, and you just saw a Jayson Tatum dunk that thrilled you. You want to share it in GIF form on this board or on facebook/twitter. You know that the dunk occurred at the 7:50 minute mark of the 1st half. What do you do?

(1) Find the game on Youtube. Almost every Duke game is on youtube, so what these instructions are teaching is basically how to transform a youtube clip into a GIF. When searching for the Duke game, it might help to filter the search by "Duration (>20 minutes)" and/or "Upload Date".

(2) Once you've found the youtube video of the entire game, find the video timestamp of when that Tatum dunk occurred. So, the 7:50 minute mark of the 1st half might translate into a youtube video timestamp of 30 minutes, 25 seconds, for example.

(3) Go to the GFYcat website and upload the youtube video of the game by pasting the URL of the youtube video.

(4) Once the youtube video is loaded in GFYcat, click on "Start time" in the bottom left corner of the video and change it to the timestamp of when the Tatum dunk occurred.

(5) Use the blue bar at the bottom to change the length of the clip so that it only captures the Tatum dunk.

(6) Hit "Create" at very the bottom. This will transform the youtube clip into a GIF, and it will take anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute to do the transformation.

(7) When the transformation is complete, you will be looking at a high-resolution GIF of the Tatum dunk. We don't want that. In the bottom right corner, click on the gear and select "Open Small GIF format". This will open a new tab with a low-resolution version of the Tatum dunk. Copy the URL of this low-res GIF.

(8) Post the GIF on this board like you would any other image.

Happy Giffing.

I've been using the GIFs to walk through plays that I found interesting. Some of you might do the same, and others will use the GIFs for humor or maybe to ask a question. Obviously GFYcat can also be used to convert youtube videos that aren't Duke basketball games. Who knows where all this might lead? Maybe nowhere. Maybe in a week, I will be the only person posting GIFs. Let's see what happens.

[grad_devil]

Great tips, Troublemaker.

Making GIFs isn't difficult, and combined with the knowledge on this board (yours included), I expect to see some thoughtful breakdowns of Duke offensive and defensive sets, as you've already done so well. Major sporks, if I could.

But let's get serious: do you pronounce 'GIF' with a hard 'G' (as in 'Gift'), or soft 'G' (as in 'Jiff') as Steve Wilhite (the format creator) does? Let's not dodge the important question, here.

[devil84]

GIF is pronounced "jiff." If it's good enough for the founder, it's good enough for me. The developer community to which I belong has always pronounced it "jiff" and we got our start communicating with each other via Compuserve, which is where Wilhite developed the format.

"Choosy developers choose GIF" was the saying. Therefore, "jiff" is the pronunciation, not the hard "g."

(Keep the pronunciation war friendly, folks!)

[Indoor66]

I thought everyone wanted a hard GIF!

[dahntaysdawg]

This is great. I've always wanted to learn how to create GIFs, but have always been far too lazy to research on my own.

[Doria]

Yes, thanks for taking the time to do this!

And I, also--and everyone I know--have always pronounced it with a hard "G," as opposed to the soft "jpeg." TIL, DBR edition

[Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15]

Yes, thanks for taking the time to do this!

And I, also--and everyone I know--have always pronounced it with a hard "G," as opposed to the soft "jpeg." TIL, DBR edition

Tis the season for GIF giving!

*makes some popcorn and waits to see what sort of entertainment comes from this*

[gam7]

Mods, could you please tack these instructions on the first page?

[UrinalCake]

The acronym GIF stands for "General Information Format" and as such should be pronounced with a "J" sound.