Format:GIF

FormatInfoBox Graphics Interchange Format
File Extension(s):	.gif
Type:	(animated) pictures
Software:	GIMP; online converters
Machines:
Repositories:	Giphy.com

GIFs can be a nice way to embed short and silent video sequences on wiki pages.

Longer and narrated videos are best uploaded elsewhere (like YouTube Makers do it) and just linked from this wiki.

Resolution Limit

GIFs with a total resolution of more than 12.5 megapixels (width × height × number of frames) can by default not be scaled in MediaWiki wikis (like ours) and will only show the animation in their native size. ^[1]

Best create smaller GIFs if they are supposed to work in thumbnails or InfoBoxes!

Video to GIF

Online Converters

There are tons of free conversion websites out there that let you create GIFs from common video formats...these are just some examples we've tried.

• [https://ezgif.com/ ezGIF.com
  • quick processing, many useful features like cropping/resizing/compression
  • accepts "MP4, WebM, AVI, MPEG, FLV, MOV, 3GP and other video files"
• Giphy.com
  • quick processing, allows adjustment of length and starting time, sticker/caption function
  • accepts mp4, mov, mpg and m4v videos
• Zamzar.com
  • only converts entire uncropped videos (might lead to large files)

Mobile Apps

Since people tend to take videos with their phones, it is also nice to have an option to make gifs out of those videos.

• Luzian is using GIF Maker on his Android Smartphone.

Image Sequence to GIF

If you have a sequence of still images, e.g. drawn with Inkscape, you can easily import them into GIMP as layers and export the whole stack as a GIF. When you use the .gif file extension on a multi-layer export, a dialog will automatically pop up asking whether you want to create an animation.