Gifify is faster and easier to install and worked much better for me.

Just did this today on Sierra and the commands to install XQuartz on Mac OS X now are:

brew cask install xquartz
open /usr/local/Caskroom/xquartz/2.7.11/XQuartz.pkg

This works like a charm with the change needed for xquartz.

I skipped the following: open /usr/local/Caskroom/xquartz/2.7.11/XQuartz.pkg

It appears homebrew now does that for you:

==> Installing Cask xquartz
==> Running installer for xquartz; your password may be necessary.

Thanks!!

Thanks! I needed this for a Medium post ;) But I noticed that the speed is doubled; is that due to the 10fps option ?

Great instructions - many thanks!

Is it brew cask install xquartz rather than x-quartz?

Great tips! Thanks!

Useful! Thanks!

@betandr yeah, gist should be updated

@vinnyA3 updated :)

I did not need to install xQuartz, just a straight forward
brew install gifsicle
did the job

Made a small bash script to save to ~/Downloads/ and prompts for path to .mov and .gif name.

To use: option + right click on .mov file to get the PATH. Then Paste that path into the script when it asks for a .mov

Then, Enter a name for your .gif file. The script will append .gif to the name given.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

if ! [ -x "$(command -v ffmpeg)" ]; then
  echo 'Error: ffmpeg is not installed. please install with (brew install ffmpeg)' >&2
  exit 1
fi

if ! [ -x "$(command -v gifsicle)" ]; then
  echo 'Error: gifsicle is not installed. please install with (brew install gifsicle)' >&2
  exit 1
fi


echo -n "enter absolute path to .mov: "
read -r MOVNAME

echo -n "enter name for your gif (the script will add the extension for you): "
read -r GIFNAME

ffmpeg -i "$MOVNAME" -pix_fmt rgb24 -r 10 -f gif - | gifsicle --optimize=3 --delay=3 > ~/Downloads/"$GIFNAME".gif

echo -e "\nSaved ${GIFNAME} to downloads"

Changelog:

• Removed -s 600x400 to not distort when taking videos of emulators/simulators or things with different dimensions.
• Added check for gifsicle and ffmpeg

EDIT Also, to confirm what @andrewar-sportsbet said, I also did not need to install xQuartz. I just did brew install ffmpeg and brew install gifsicle. Also, edited script to check for these.

I had to use --delay=10 to get the proper frame rate combo and speed. According to gifsicle's manual:

--delay time: Set the delay between frames to time in hundredths of a second.

So if you change the framerate to 10fps, you want 10 hundredths of a second between each frame :)

Be aware that brew install ffmpeg brings in a million dependencies, including for some bizarre reason, gnutls and unbound (a validating, recursive, caching DNS resolver):

• aom, libpng, freetype, fontconfig, frei0r, gettext, libidn2, libtasn1, p11-kit, libevent, unbound, gnutls, lame, fribidi, glib, pixman, cairo, graphite2, harfbuzz, libass, libbluray, libsoxr, libvidstab, libogg, libvpx, opencore-amr, jpeg, libtiff, little-cms2, openjpeg, opus, rtmpdump, flac, libsamplerate, rubberband, sdl2, snappy, giflib, webp, leptonica, tesseract, theora, x264, x265 and xvid

That said, this worked really well. I used --delay=10 too.

You can find xquartz here if you installed it with homebrew v2.2+,

/usr/local/Caskroom/xquartz/2.7.11/XQuartz.pkg

❤️ It works like a charm!

I got Incompatible pixel format 'rgb24' for codec 'gif', auto-selecting format 'rgb8' despite installing gifsicle, upgrading ffmpeg, etc.

Here is my version for slightly higher-quality output (my use-case is short screencasts of UI interactions for sharing on Github PR's). Note it is slower.

mov2gif() {
  out="$(echo $1 | sed 's/\.mov$/\.gif/')"
  max_width="650"
  frames_per_second="20"
  ffmpeg -i $1 -vf "scale=min(iw\,$max_width):-1" -r "$frames_per_second" -sws_flags lanczos -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm - \
    | convert -delay 5 -layers Optimize -loop 0 - "$out" &&
  echo "$(tput setaf 2)output file: $out$(tput sgr 0)" &&
  open -a Google\ Chrome $out
}

I got Incompatible pixel format 'rgb24' for codec 'gif', auto-selecting format 'rgb8' despite installing gifsicle, upgrading ffmpeg, etc.

Here is my version for slightly higher-quality output (my use-case is short screencasts of UI interactions for sharing on Github PR's). Note it is slower.

mov2gif() {
  out="$(echo $1 | sed 's/\.mov$/\.gif/')"
  max_width="650"
  frames_per_second="20"
  ffmpeg -i $1 -vf "scale=min(iw\,$max_width):-1" -r "$frames_per_second" -sws_flags lanczos -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm - \
    | convert -delay 5 -layers Optimize -loop 0 - "$out" &&
  echo "$(tput setaf 2)output file: $out$(tput sgr 0)" &&
  open -a Google\ Chrome $out
}

for future readers - convert is from imagemagick (installed via brew install imagemagick)

To avoid installing the dependencies if you don't need them, use docker:

docker run -v $PWD:/tmp jrottenberg/ffmpeg \
        -stats  \
        -i /tmp/file.mov \
        -vf "scale=min(iw\,650):-1" -r 20 \
        -f gif - > file.gif

The file must be in the same directory as you run, if not you need to provide the right volume configuration (see docker volume documentation).

For macOS, we have built one small app: https://github.com/joshdholtz/crunchygif

What @mrk-han said. I didn't need to do anything other than brew install ffmpeg and brew install gifsicle and away we go with the one-liner, which you can easily tweak to fix the size and the output delay framerate.

ffmpeg -i in.mov -r 10 -f gif - | gifsicle --optimize=3 > out.gif was enough for me. Also you need to run brew install ffmpeg gifsicle before running the command.

ffmpeg -i in.mov -r 10 -f gif - | gifsicle --optimize=3 > out.gif worked well. Thanks @ugultopu

cool

Thanks dude.

Awesome!
few things that I could collect to use ffmpeg from terminal

• brew install gifsicle
• brew install ffmpeg I already had it, you can verify by typing ffmpeg on terminal (install only if you see command not found)
• It works fine with mp4 and mov format

The dropbox link at the top of this gist died long ago. (Thanks Dropbox for removing features).
Here's a hack to bring it back: uploading image as a comment to this gist, then linking the resulting URL from the markdown in the gist itself. :)

brew cask install xquartz has been updated to brew install xquartz --cask

Thanks, Dropbox!

brew cask install xquartz has been updated to brew install xquartz --cask
Should be updated to something else ;-)

Gifski ftw!

• Record with Quicktime.
• Drag-and-drop the recording into Gifski.
• Tweak your options.
• Generate gif.
• Tweak again.
• Done.