I'm going to be as upfront about this as possible, because I have very few brains and very little to hide: I have literally no idea how gifs work. I am aware that there are human beings out there who create them, and I am forever grateful that they decided to take up residence on our planet, because they are truly doing the Important Work. But now, thanks to Imgur's new easy gif-making site Video to Gif, you can be a hero, too. Every last one of us, even the most incompetent internet user in the world (aka, me), can make a gif with this fancy, easy-to-use gif maker.
It's as simple as opening the page, finding a video link with the scene you want to make into a gif, and copying the link into the browser. From there you use a super intuitive video cropping tool to pick where you want to start the gif and cut it off, and you can even add text. I was reluctant to get my hands dirty with something that is usually so far beyond my reach, but even I got the hang of it. Here's what the process looks like:
You plug in your link, and it automatically pulls up the video. Naturally, mine included Amy Poehler. I wanted to get the first second or so of the video gif'd, so I selected it here:
And then I added dialogue text (which I had memorized already, because I have seen this show too many times to admit to the world wide web.)
Then I hit "Create Gif" at the bottom of the page, and VOILÀ! I MASTERED THE INTERNET! It gives you a direct link to the gif, an HTML link, and pretty much any other kind of link you can think of. Here is the end result of mine:
And because I love Amy Poehler, I couldn't resist making a few more:
My only two complaints:
- You have to account for the app cutting off the first few miliseconds of whatever video you're using, so you kind of have to back up your start time to a teensy bit further back than the actual start time it will give you. Still, for something this easy, a little guesswork isn't too high of a price to pay.
- There is an 80 character limit on the text, and you can't do more than one line.
That's about the limit of what you can do text-wise (and you'll see again from the weird cut-off that it's a few milliseconds off from where I kept trying to make it). It's not the most refined form of gif-making, but for people like me who relish the easy tech tools, it's at least a good start.
Images: NBC
