#myhelp

you need a few things to “gif fast.” these are in order of when you acquire them:

a show you want to gif that is on netflix or another streaming service

a way to screen record

a capping program of your choice

a mac (where you can automatically make a new folder for many caps) or File2Folder, a shell program for windows that will make a new, labeled folder for the caps you sort

photoshop

a giffing action you like

some time

i would like to point out this workflow was not invented by me, nor is it mine. some little bits have been taken from other gif makers i am friends with after they told me techniques that work for them. or i made some mistakes, made other, better, mistakes, then kept it as my workflow.

STEP ONE: THE SHOW

i like to screen record the individual clips from netflix. this makes my life easier, as i don’t have to sort through parts of a show that doesn’t have my fcs in it

screen record only the clips where your fc is in it. this makes it fast. as things are recording, go do the things you’ve been putting off for weeks

this is legitimately, how my laundry gets done

STEP TWO: THE CLIPS

i load the clips into a screen capper and set it to 25 frames. sometimes i make the size smaller (usually to 1280x720) to save space on my computer

this is because i am a fossil who does not use kmplayer and is not interested enough to learn

let them puppies go. depending on how many clips you have, this’ll take like half an hour, tops

go make yourself some food. maybe take a shower. do your replies.

STEP THREE: THE SORTING

now that your caps have been made, each clip is a folder containing them from that clip

within each folder, i group them into sub-folders that can be loaded into ps

i group caps from 30 to 100 frames at a time into folder. because i use a pc, i use File2Folder to put them into individual folders and i number them as i go. this is so i can see how many gifs i have in total, since we’re capping by clip so they’re all in different folders

when i’m done sorting a folder, i change the folder name to a number as i go through the different clips that have been capped.

for example: i had 60 total clips i screen recorded for luna nera. here’s what that looks like

and here’s what the sub folders look like within one of these folders

this is just for organization’s sake.

STEP FOUR: THE GIFFING

i have recorded an action to play my giffing action five times. someone told me this once to help speed up my workflow

so my gif folders process five at a time

this can be annoying if you want to do something when you’re on gif 3 of 5, but i find it pretty nice compared to doing one at a time

i also have my ps set up in a split screen like this

my psd is on the right and the gif being made is on the left

STEP FIVE: THE SECRET

okay, so you have your gifs running in the background. they’re doing their thing

you want to have sorted maybe 100 gifs so you can get that started

then, i sort the rest of the caps into folders, as the folders i’ve already sorted are processing

so like, two things are happening at once and it makes it look like i’m really fast, when i’m just not doing it in order

EXAMPLE WORKFLOW

version one: screen record -> process caps -> sort 100ish caps -> begin gif processing -> sort remaining caps as they process

so you flip back and forth between colouring/saving the gifs and sorting caps of the show

version two: screen record -> process caps -> sort all the caps as you do zoom lectures -> begin gif processing -> repeat the beginning of this process for a NEW show -> sort caps of second show as you process gifs from first show

slightly more advanced version of workflow version one that completes two shows at once.

i tend to sort caps while i am in zoom class or listening to a youtube video that’s really long and take breaks based on how long the video/class is

i also have the giffing process going throughout the day so i periodically click on photoshop, crop a few gifs, then go back to whatever i’m doing.