giffer

Easily make gifs or videos from a/b loop points in MPV.

NOTE: I no longer use nor develop this script; I recommend mpv-webm instead, as it is much more user-friendly and has many more features (including, despite its name, the option to export as GIF).

This is a script to easily generate a gif or video file from the a/b loop points in MPV. I started from the code on http://blog.pkh.me/p/21-high-quality-gif-with-ffmpeg.html and modified it to work better with mpv, as well as have a few minor changes.

Technically, MPV is optional since you can easily use the script by itself in the shell.

Requirements

• mpv (video player; optional)
• ffmpeg (to actually generate the gif)
• bc (to calculate the duration from a/b start/end points; not optional if you want frame precision since bash's built-in expr command doesn't support floating point)

Setup

• Add the lines in input.conf to your mpv's input.conf file (usually located at ~/.config/mpv/input.conf; create it if it doesn't exist already)
• Change the paths in those lines to point to the location where you put the 'giffer' script, and the location where you want the gif/video to be saved.

Usage

• Play a video file using MPV.
• Press l to set the start point of the gif.
• Press l again to set the end point of the gif.
• After the start and end points have been defined, press g to export as gif or h to export as video.
• Press l a third time to clear the loop and continue watching the video.
• For extra precision, you can pause the video and then use . and , to move forward or backward by one frame.