#notstim

First of all: I use Firefox and the adblock extension UBlock Origin , you should too. (I also use Windows, but i can't say i recommend that.)

Find your video source

I use mostly youtube and instagram. for instagram I use: https://fastdl.app/ for youtube i use: https://yt5s.com

You may use whatever downloader you're comfortable with, it doesn't matter really. either way, USE AN ADBLOCKER!! Something that will block pop-ups.

I will be using this video: https://www.instagram.com/p/CCgrjLJnDWO/ !

TRIMMING THE VIDEO

Trim video into short sections will make it easier and faster to turn it into a gif! I use the windows editing software to do this. Open the video and go down to the pen icon, click it and then click "Trim"

This pops open a new window! (The volume settings do NOT carry over (very stupid) so i recommend having your headphones either off or turned very low.)

On the timeline on the bottom, there is three things. Start and End are both blocks, and your viewing point is a little circle with a line. Don't worry about cutting exactly to the point you want, we can get it exactly to the frame later. Then save the trimmed video! I like to name them "trim 1" "trim 2" ectera if i have multiple.

STABILIZING THE VIDEO

This video is kinda very shaky! (Which is also why i am using it for this tutorial). But we can fix that!

(not every video will need stabilizing. Most don't. Some shaky videos I leave shaky, because stabilizing them looks weird. this is all personal preference)

I use this website for stabilizing: https://pixiko.com/tools alas, it leaves very large watermarks a corner of the video. Which usually isn't an issue for vertical videos that I will crop, but this one is square. So we will make it vertical

AVOIDING PIXIKO WATERMARK BY RESIZING VIDEO! (sidequest)

go to photopea!: https://www.photopea.com/ we will revisit this later.

File -> Open -> Select your mp4 file -> Open

It will then pop up asking for what frames per second(fps) you want! It will also display the original video's information in this order:

Pixel size (540 x 640 px), Original amount of frames(221 frames), Video size (345.3 MB decoded)

Length of video (7.37 seconds), Original video's fps (30 FPS)

Then it will have a slider! Here you can input whatever fps you want on your gif. More frames means smoother gif, but higher file size. Less frames means a choppier gif, but lower file size. I usually use 12, 15, or 20 fps. If you want to slow down your video later, you should probably put your frames higher so the slowed video won't end up looking choppy.

Then open it up! It might take a while to load. When it does, go up to "Image", click, then go down to "Canvas Size"

Awesome, new window popup. Here you can change the canvas size. The little chain icon locks the ratio (the number:number next to it). We won't use that. The little grid with the circle in it is where the image will anchor from, you click different squares of the grid to change it. Anchoring it just means that spot will stick the same, and canvas will expand/shrink from it. For now we are keeping it in the middle.

We will change the height of the gif, since Pixiko adds watermarks to either the top or the bottom of the video.

Awesome. We have transparent bits on the top and the bottom that we will crop out later. Now Photopea doesn't let me export files as mp4s, and Pixiko doesn't let me upload gifs. So we will over-complicate this even more!

File -> Export As-> GIF.

A popup might appear asking about if you want to resize your gif smaller. In this case I wont.

Wow! A new window! These are all the stats of your new gif. Previous things already explained are previously explained. "Quality" is a slider that effects how many colors and how many details are in your gif. It saves minor space, but it's such a small change that I won't recommend lowering it. "dither" is a checkbox that effects if your gif is dithered or not. Dithering is little pixelizations of color added to blend things better. It takes up a lot more space, but looks better in most cases. By default it is off, and instead the colors of the video are more segmented and can look like cell-shading. This saves some space, but it doesn't look good for certain small details or color gradients. I will turn dither on.

"Speed" is how fast or slow the gif plays.

"Repeat (0 = Forever) is how many times the gif will repeat itself. By default it should be 0, meaning it will loop forever. You can change this if you want, but that means the gif will only play that many times before being frozen forever.

"reverse frames" plays the gif in reverse.

"boomerang" means the gif will go 1,2,3,4,3,2,1 ; it will complete itself normally and then reverse to the beginning.

OKAY AWESOME. Save your gif and pack it up to move to YET ANOTHER website, ezgif!

Ezgif: https://ezgif.com/

Head over to "Video to GIF", then to the "GIF to Mp4" below that.

Select your file and press the blue upload button! This might take a while to load!

Then scroll down, press the blue "Convert GIF to Mp4" button. Wait for your video to process and then download it!

OKAY WE FINALLY GO BACK TO PIXIKO

STABILIZATION BACK ON TRACK!!!!!!

Here's the website again: https://pixiko.com/tools

Go to the tools section (up on top) and then scroll down to Video stabilizer (in "SEPERATE TOOLS" category). Or you could just ctrl+f it.

From that point on it is just uploading the video, waiting(a while), and then downloading your new stabilized video!! Awesome!

PHOTOPEA CONTROLS (canvas size, color editing, deleting frames) (the fun part)

NOW go back to photopea. Upload your gif (File -> Open -> select file -> open). You will have to put your fps again!

Ok. Now you must learn how Photopea organized gifs. Gifs are their own folder, and inside that folder each frame is a file. 'layer 1' plays first and 'layer 2' plays second. Layers outside of the folder, and below it, will display behind the gif as a still image. (cool for transparent gifs, or if you need to stretch out a gif)

To view each layer/frame, press the square next to it's image+name. If there's an eyeball, it's visible. If there's an empty box, it's not. All layers in the folder will show up in the gif, even if they are all empty boxes, so don't worry about that!

You can shuffle frames or delete them, but keep them inside the folder. (and keep the folder "Pass Through". You can change individual layer types though)

You may delete specific frames! If your trim of the video wasn't perfect, you can delete the ends/starts here!

Here, i deleted a frame in the middle of the gif. it was awkward and made the gif jump weirdly. Cutting it out made it a little choppy, but i prefer that look to how it looked before.

awesome. Okay, first, go to the left side of the screen and select the first tool (an arrow). On the top of the screen, next to "Auto-Select" find the dark box saying "Layer". Click it and switch to "Folder". This makes it so when you move things, you will be moving the entire folder/gif and not just singular frames.

On tumblr, images that are sidebyside will "crop" (if you click on it it's full size) to whatever the lowest height ratio is in that image row.

This means, if you have a row of 1:1 , 3:1 , 1:3 (width:height), the whole row will crop down to 3:1 and your gifs will all be rectangles.

example:

SO, I crop my gifs to 1:1.

Awesome. Okay, go up to Image -> Canvas Size. and crop the gif down to 1:1. You may have to move your image to get the things you want in frame. Use the cursor tool for this, and just click and drag.

awesome. now here's the fun part.

THE FUN PART (editing, colors, pizazz)

You can add effects to your gif, such as changing its color. Mostly changing its color.

Select the folder by clicking on it, this makes it easier to get your effect into the right place (though you can drag it around). Anything below the Adjustment layer is effected, and anything above isn't.

Then go down to the bottom, below the layer window, and click the half-filled in circle. A popup will appear with lots of different effects! You can mess around with all of these. For this one I will be using "Photo Filter" and "Selective color"

Photo Filer applies a color over the entire image. By clicking the orange (default) color block, you can pick the color you want. Density slider is basically the opacity. "Preserve Luminosity" means it will keep the brights and darks of the original image.

Now!! If you ever loose your adjustment sliders: select the adjustment layer, then go up to the little button that has little sliders/horizontal lines in it. Click that, and it should pop back up.

Selective color lets you pick basic colors and turn up certain amounts for them. I can make red more magenta, and yellows more cyan, or whites more magenta.

"Absolute", as far as i can tell, just turns up the effect more strong. I usually turn it on when i want to really effect something.

There is many other adjustment layers you can use! I will not explain them all, you can explore yourself.

ONCE YOU ARE HAPPY, you can export the gif! File -> Export as -> GIF.

set your speed and if you would like dither or not.

Now, this file may be HUGE. A quick way to deal with that is to turn down the pixel size of the image. Make sure the little chain between Width and Height is selected(dark). This keeps the ratio the same (and you will only have to edit one number instead of both).

I will shrink my image down to 400 px.

You can check how large your file size in within the little viewer, in a black box on the bottom. Tumblr's highest file size is 10 MB, so this gif is too big at 12.8 MB. WE SHALL FIX THAT!

EZGIF OPTIMIZATION

head BACK to ezgif! This website has many good ways to optimize gifs.

Click the "Optimize" tab. Select your file and upload!

awesome. Ezgif explains itself well, and is a great website, so i will just explain a few things that aren't explained.

Clicking through the bar of "crop, resize, crop, optimize," Ectera will keep the same gif you uploaded.

Say i used lossy gif, pressed the blue button, watched a cat dance as it loaded, then got my compressed gif.

A new bar appears below this new gif! If you'd like to keep this gif, you should click this bottom bar. Now i can click "Resize" and go resize my gif, and it will transfer this same gif over. ( i do recommend resizing before doing any compression/lossy gif though)

Now i will explain a way of lowering fize size: deleting certain frames.

In optimize, there is an option to remove every certain frame. This makes the video more choppy, but is a good way to save space. Say I remove every 2nd frame,

original:

every second frame removed:

A LOT FASTER!!!!! this is because it's literally cutting it in half. each frame waits like, 20 milliseconds, so removing every second frame is cutting that total time in half. I fix this by going to the speed tab!

50% slower for every 2nd frame,

66% slower for every 3rd frame,

75% slower for every 4th frame

here's the same every second frame removed gif slowed down.

looks better! Very choppy, but that's just because there's so many frames missing. If you do remove frames, I recommend just using every 4th frame becase it's hardly noticeable.

Ezgif explains everything else well, so i will let it explain itself.