[HN Gopher] Create animated GIF and WebP from videos using FFmpeg
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       Create animated GIF and WebP from videos using FFmpeg
        
       Author : Audiolite
       Score  : 56 points
       Date   : 2021-02-28 19:35 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mattj.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mattj.io)
        
       | canada_dry wrote:
       | Handy guide, thx!
       | 
       | A bit overkill but, a gui to hand-hold old folks like me would
       | handy. Perhaps an addin for blender could work - since it's video
       | handling chops are growing bigger every day?
       | 
       | > I'm an engineering manager at Google Stadia
       | 
       | That's gotta be an interesting gig!
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | eneve wrote:
       | I use something similar in MetaMeme for Android
        
         | devadvance wrote:
         | Are you using FFmpeg or directly using libavcodec (or similar)?
        
       | bitsen wrote:
       | How about APNG?
        
       | dheera wrote:
       | Oh please no. Why would you ever do this? Please use the <video>
       | tag to embed your actual video with a GIF fallback if you wish.
       | Why are we using an ancient 8-bit lossless format for video when
       | pretty much all browsers support video embeds these days?
       | <video width="320" height="240" autoplay loop playsinline muted>
       | <source src="foo.mp4" type="video/mp4">             <source
       | src="foo.ogg" type="video/ogg">             <!-- GIF fallback for
       | ancient browsers but it's 2021 and you probably don't need this
       | anymore -->             <img src="foo.gif" width="320"
       | height="240">         </video>
       | 
       | With H.264 or any modern codec you'll get 24-bit color and
       | smaller file sizes than GIF. It's better in every way I can
       | imagine.
        
         | sp332 wrote:
         | Agreed. I think people see little video clips and think "oh, a
         | GIF" without realizing that imgur, giphy, etc. don't actually
         | use GIFs.
        
           | ourcat wrote:
           | Also, twitter and Facebbok convert uploaded GIFs to video.
        
       | jonplackett wrote:
       | I switched to ffmpegging my gifs a year ago and haven't looked
       | back. It's a bit annoying to begin with but now so much easier
       | than using some 3rd rate program or having to upload everything
       | to EZGif. It's worth the pain!
        
         | devadvance wrote:
         | Author here. This is the same journey I went through and I 100%
         | agree! It can be intimidating at first, but FFmpeg is a a
         | worthwhile utility to begin learning.
         | 
         | I've also added some shell functions[0] to my dotfiles to make
         | it a bit easier to use when switching between several different
         | machines.
         | 
         | [0]
         | https://gist.github.com/devadvance/03d3c8f57b3e0254fb989e946...
        
           | jonplackett wrote:
           | You've made a really handy cheat sheet, thanks! Bookmarked it
           | for future use!
           | 
           | And yeah, it's great, and not just for gifs. Just quickly re-
           | encoding something in a different format / container is so
           | much easier than faffing around opening a proper program.
           | 
           | Took a while to not get annoyed with it though and figure out
           | annoying watch-outs like -pix_fmt yuv420p, which I now
           | finally have memorised.
        
       | nicbou wrote:
       | Perhaps it's time to start a collection of ffmpeg commands for
       | every situation, similar to bro pages [1]. I feel like I have to
       | look at my old projects every time I need to use it. It took me a
       | lot of trial and error to write an all-purpose ffmpeg command.
       | 
       | This is how I convert videos to 720p web-playable videos (if it's
       | not already web-playable):
       | 
       | https://github.com/nicbou/homeserver/blob/22c0a160f9df5f4c34...
       | 
       | This is how I create hover previews like on modern streaming
       | sites:
       | 
       | https://github.com/nicbou/timeline/blob/9d9340930ed0213dffdd...
       | 
       | [1] http://bropages.org/tar
        
         | panabee wrote:
         | this is a wonderful idea. we launched a repo here to do exactly
         | this; we'll update the repo over time as we collect commands.
         | 
         | https://github.com/HotpotDesign/FFMpeg-Online
         | 
         | could we list and credit your commands?
        
         | devadvance wrote:
         | The hover previews is an awesome example. Thanks for sharing!
         | 
         | I like collections of commands. However, the challenges that
         | seem unsolved are (1) keeping the example in sync with the CLI
         | options, and (2) making it easy to dig into parts of examples.
         | The former is a classic documentation problem, of course.
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-28 23:00 UTC)