#comparison set

Is it A????

Or is it B????

Is it A????

Or is it B????

Is it A????

Or is it B????

Gifski

GIF GENERATION AND OPTIMIZATION

Tool Type: GUI or Command line tool (there are two versions)

Difficulty: Easy (GUI); Moderate (CLI)

Operating systems: Mac, Windows, and Linux (CLI only—no GUI)

Input(s): Video files (MP4)

How much of a difference can you tell between these two gifs?

Both seem to give good results, but to me, in the top row, the one on the left looks better, but in the bottom, row, the one on the right looks better.

Gifs in the left hand column are converted and compressed to 500 px using the ffmpeg command from Tutorial 1; in the right column, using Gifski.

Gifski GUI Version (Mac and Windows)

NOTE: Gifski is solely for converting MP4 clips to optimized gifs. If you need to caption or color, you have to do that externally.

Installation

The GUI version of Gifski is available in the Apple App store, but links to it and the Windows downloader can be found through the official site.

Using the GUI

After opening your MP4 file, in the bottom left corner, you can see the estimated size of your resulting gif. This estimate will auto-update as you adjust your compression settings. Remember: To upload your gif on Tumblr, it needs to be about 10MB or less. If it's already 10MB, just go ahead and click convert! If not (which is more than likely):

Adjust FPS to 18. I find this frame rate to be a good balance of compression and retained quality.

Decrease the dimensions of your gif as needed. Whether you use the drop down box or the dialogue boxes, Gifski will automatically scale to retain your gif's screen ratio rather than stretch it to fit, so you don't need to worry about keeping your gif proportional.

You can finely adjust the settings until your gif is exactly 10 MB if you want to keep the best quality, or just aim for a ballpark.

Cick "Covert" then save the resulting gif. Do this for all your .mp4 clips and then boom. You're done.

Gifski Command Line Version (Linux, Mac, Windows)

There is a command line version of Gifski just like there's a command line version of ffmpeg. While the GUI version isn't available for Linux, the command line version is also available for Linux.

Installation

This must be installed separately from the GUI version, via your system shell (Powershell on Windows, Terminal on MacOS). I recommend you install via Homebrew if you're on Mac or Linux by pasting this into your terminal (if/once Homebrew is installed):

brew install gifski

Windows users or other users who don't want Homebrew can follow directions on the Gifski website.

Converting one video file to GIF

This simple command will convert one .mp4 file to .gif (parts in red can be adjusted, parts in blue should be changed):

cd FilePathToYourMP4 gifski --fps 18 --width 500 --quality 100 -o output.gif input.mp4

Where input.mp4 is the name of the MP4 clip you want to make into an optimized gif and output.gif is the desired name of your gif on output.

How to adjust the options in the script:

Change the number frames per second (fps). Go to fps=18 and change “18” up or down.

Scale the gif up or down. Go to width 500 and change “500” up or down to scale the gif up and down by its pixel width.

Change the quality. Go to quality 100 and change “100” to any value between 0 and 100, where 100 is the highest quality.

Converting a folder of video files to GIF

Place all of your video clips into a folder called gifset1. Put an empty subfolder inside the gifset1 folder called gifs. Go to your system shell and copy and paste the following indented text:

Linux and Mac:

cd ~/Desktop/gifset1 for i in .mp4; do gifski --fps 18 --width 500 --quality 100 -o gifs/${i%.}.gif "$i"; done

Windows:

cd ~\Desktop\gifset1 for i in .mp4; do gifski --fps 18 --width 500 --quality 100 -o gifs\${i%.}.gif "$i"; done

Two different settings here.

The top clip was rendered and optimized into a gif with this code:

for i in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -y -i "$i" -sws_dither bayer=5 -filter_complex "fps=30,scale=540:-1:flags=lanczos,smartblur=1.5:-0.55" gifs/${i%.}.gif; done

Then the second one using this code:

for i in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -y -i "$i" -filter_complex "smartblur=1.5:-1" gifski1/${i%.}.mp4; done

Which sharpens the frames of the MP4 clip, then this to make the gif:

for i in *.mp4; do gifski --fps 23 --width 540 --quality 100 -o ${i%.*}.gif "$i"; done

Comparison set for encoder settings on export in ScreenToGif.

The first gif (top left) uses the high quality FFmpeg encoder with a level 3 bayer dither. (8.9 MB)

The second gif (top right) uses the gifski high quality encoder with the quality bar maxed. (9.9 MB)

The third gif (middle left) uses KGy SOFT High Quality (10.5 MB)

The fourth gif (middle right) uses KGy SOFT Balanced (9.7 MB)

The last gif uses ScreenToGif's encoder (10.1 MB)

As you can see, ScreenToGif's native encoder gives by far the worst result (which is why I made it the odd man out—thought it would be easier to compare the other four who are clearly the winners this way). The native encoder is not only the worst quality but also the slowest.

In my opinion, KGy SOFT Balanced appears to best balance quality and compression—at least for this gif.

What I did prior to exporting for all of these gifs:

Screen captured at 30 FPS (this did not happen on a 1080p monitor unfortunately as I don't have one for PC, and the resolution at which the screencapture is taken DOES matter).

Removed 90% duplicates and used the sum (this is to decrease file size).

Cropped to a square shape.

Scaled down to a 500 pixel width maintaining DPI from the original image and using "Fant" for the quality setting when scaling (the other rescaling setting is shit for the quality).

FFmpeg script 1 (left) versus Gifski CLI compression script (right).