# OS X Screencast to animated GIF

The following animated gif was captured with only free (as in beer) OS X tools: Quicktime, ffmpeg, and gifsicle.

This gist shows how.

![Screencapture GIF](http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/29440342/screenshots/OBDHSF-KJDFKJS-screencapture.gif)

## Instructions

The above gif was created as follows:
* Open "Quicktime Player", 
* Go to File -> New Screen Recording
* Selected screen portion by dragging a rectangle, recorded 13 second video. 
* Saved the video in **full quality** named in.mov (filesize: 19 megabytes)
* Ran the following command that produced out.gif (filesize: 48 kilabytes)
  * `ffmpeg -i in.mov -s 600x400 -pix_fmt rgb24 -r 10 -f gif - | gifsicle -O3 -d3 > out.gif`
  * "-r 10" refers to 10 frames per second
  * "-s 600x400" specifies max-width and max-height

## Installation

The conversion requires the following command-line tools:

* **ffmpeg** to process the video file
* **gifsicle** to create and optimize the an animated gif

If you use homebrew and homebrew-cask software packages, just type this in: 
    brew install ffmpeg 
    brew-cask install x-quartz #dependency for gifsicle, only required for mountain-lion and above
    open /usr/local/Cellar/xquartz/2.7.4/XQuartz.pkg # launches the XQuartz installer that cask downloaded
    brew install gifsicle

## Resources:

* http://schneems.com/post/41104255619/use-gifs-in-your-pull-request-for-good-not-evil (primary source!)
* http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/16zu7d/use_gifs_in_your_pull_requests_for_good_not_evil/
* http://superuser.com/questions/436056/how-can-i-get-ffmpeg-to-convert-a-mov-to-a-gif#_=_
* http://gnuski.blogspot.ca/2012/06/creating-animate-gif-with-free-software.html