Turn a Video into an Animated GIF.

Programs you must have:

GIMP- GNU Image Manipulation Program

https://www.gimp.org/downloads/

GAP- Gimp Animation Package

http://photocomix-resources.deviantart.com/art/GAP-2-6-for-Gimp-2-6-Windows-135464357

Additional programs you may want:

DVD Ripping software of your choice. (I prefer DVD Shrink.)

Freemake Video Convertor.

Export Layers plugin for GIMP

http://registry.gimp.org/node/28268

A GIF making program you like. Gimp does the job, but I like JASC Animation Shop better.

I found a mistake in the Back to the Future cartoon show that is so hilarious that I must post it to one of my personal blogs. It's in episode 17.

You can pretty much see what is going on, but an animated GIF would really make it pop. Normally I would use VLC and take snapshots every frame. This is exceptionally tedious. Unfortunately I have yet to find a program that can easily make an animated GIF from video, or just extract the frames I need. I have found a process that is long, almost as tedious as VLC, in fact can be very frustrating, but does work.

I already have the DVDs ripped. Now to import the episode to Freemake Video Converter to isolate the exact scene that I want. You only want to deal with the frames you need, not the tens of thousands that will be made if you don't edit it down.

Drag and drop the episode into Freemake and click the scissors to the left.

Now we have the video editor. For expediency I won't go through all the controls. In fact I'll skip to the scene.

(The really nice thing about this editor is that you can easily step back a frame.)

Now to import to GIMP.

Click on Video and then Split Video into Frames. Next click on Extract Videorange.

(I originally wrote another version of this for another blog.

Out of expediency (re:laziness) I'm not redoing this whole section for this blog.)

That will pop out and extended view. Take the slider marked in red and slide it all the way to the right. Then don't touch anything else on the right side. It's buggy and will mess up if you do.

Under the slider is a number. That is how many frames are in this clip. You need to input that number in the "To Frame" box. Next check "Create only one multilayer Image." Then click okay.
 

I don't really like the way animated GIFs look when made with GIMP, so I'll export all the layers as separate images to use in JASC Animation Shop. (An oldie, but a goodie.) Go to File and Export Layers, click the button oddly named “Export Layers,” take the slider for Compression level to zero and hit export.

Now I will fire up JASC Animation Shop to make the animated GIF, but this has gone on long enough and I'll save that tutorial for another time.