11 ms·

Show HN: Put “GIF” in front of any YouTube URL and hit enter

577 points by RoryGlyphic 12y ago

judk 12y ago
http://makeagif.com/youtube-to-gif http://makeagif.com/youtube-to-gif Surface UI really does make all the difference. Interestingly, makeagif also has trouble with vevo vids.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  The founder of makeagif is nice :D Trouble with vevo vids is in the DL. Vevo does some funky stuff :[
valarauca1 12y ago
This is really cool. And I hate to be that guy, especially so early. But wouldn't it be easier on both networking and cpu to convert it to a webm?
- kmizzle 12y ago
  Cant email a webm
  - Paul_S 12y ago
    How is attaching a gif any different than attaching a webm?
    - ZenoArrow 12y ago
      Some email clients support animated gifs embedded in the main email content. None that I currently use, but I do remember it as a feature in Outlook 2003.
      - tburns 12y ago
        Mail.app on OS X also does this
    - justdropapp 12y ago
      gifs will survive for ever!
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Absolutely! We actually made a webm version (that's the smallest size to date and the fastest to create), but just wanted to perfect GIF creation and get some captions on the system early before introducing webm. Maybe we should reverse that?
  - nmjohn 12y ago
    It depends, who is your actual target audience? If it's a general anyone and everyone, gif is the way to go. If it's a more technical audience, who probably know what webm already is, then webm may make more sense And from a more marketing side of things If you went gif first and five months down the line announcing support for webm makes you look innovative and will probably get you posted to a handful of subreddits and the front page of hn. If you went webm first and five months down the line announce gif support, you probably won't be able to achieve the same results.
    - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
      Definitely. At first we wanted to target general audience and then transition into more technical. It's a little conflicting because I love HN and reddit, so my* general preferences differ from what I think is actually the best transition :3
  - jdiez17 12y ago
    If you want to convert GIFs to WebM/MP4/etc you might want to check out the MediaCrush[1] code. Or just use https://mediacru.sh https://mediacru.sh, which is and always will be free. [1]: https://github.com/mediacrush/mediacrush https://github.com/mediacrush/mediacrush
    - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
      Thank you! Are you behind midacru.sh?
      - jdiez17 12y ago
- tarr11 12y ago
  webm doesn't work on Safari or IE http://caniuse.com/webm http://caniuse.com/webm
  - fred_durst 12y ago
    I just call those two SafarIE. Safari is shaping up to be the new IE so we might as well just say them in one phrase instead of always specifying them both.
gus_massa 12y ago
I like that you can choose the starting time directly in the video. But I'd like to choose the finishing time in the video too. (I wouldn't remove the option to choose starting point+lenght).
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! I definitely agree and something we were trying to work on. One thing that's difficult is choosing the finishing time on the video. For example if it's 5 seconds or something, the two end points are really close. What do you think about beta.gifyoutube.com? It's a little different mechanics for choosing start time (which I'm not the best fan of), but maybe it's a little easier for end time. I'm actually not really sure on this. We were going to try some A|B testing but the beta GYT isn't 100% ready
  - gus_massa 12y ago
    Clicky: http://beta.gifyoutube.com http://beta.gifyoutube.com I couldn't test it because the video didn't load. I saw the beta UI once (two slice bars), but when I reloaded, the video didn't appear. (I tested IE11 and Chrome) Another small UI complain. If I type in the text box the YouTube address and I hit the enter key, it doesn't get to the edit page. I have to reach for my mouse, and click in the green "Create Gif" button.
    - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
      ahahaha YESSS the create gif enter is something we wanted to change but just never got to :[. Will do soon!
  - shaunol 12y ago
    I like this interface over the current one. The only issue I had with it is not having millisecond steps to create a decent loop. I also wasn't getting a thumbnail preview in the black box when seeking the video. Nice useful tool.
    - 12y ago
notastartup 12y ago
Really cool but wonder how youtube's legal department will react to having youtube in the domain name let alone copyright claims. What are you using for the queue?
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Plan was to get a different domain (suggestions?) and fwd it but still have the GYT functionality I'm not 100% sure if youtube minds. Someone from youtube actually put it on one of their videos (a button for it), and then said youtube community department were having fun and spreading it around We don't use a 3rd party queueing software ^_^.
  - enraged_camel 12y ago
    >>suggestions? Maybe giftube.com or yougif.com? I'd register those but keep what you currently have for now. Being able to say "put the word gif in front of any youtube url" is just great for user experience.
    - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
      Darn both taking! Will keep thinking :3
    - ada1981 12y ago
      I'd keep the URL functional as a redirect but change the brand... We will give you a free premium listing on BootName.com if you want community support to find a name.
  - benjamincburns 12y ago
    I'd suggest talking to a lawyer. My (unsolicited) layman's take: Someone from youtube != Google's legal department, which makes this situation both awesome and sad. If Google wishes to maintain their ownership of the youtube trademark, legally they must enforce their ownership of it (which means either granting you a license, or sending you a C&D). That said, I'd search around for trademark licensing info - they may have an existing license which covers this use. In the mean time you may be able to protect yourself a little by adding some text that says that YouTube is a legally registered trademark of Google, Inc., and this site is not affiliated with Google in any way.
michaelq 12y ago
This is awesome. Less than a minute to create this: https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/kWm https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/kWm
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Mwaha I love it. What's really cool is clicking the View on Youtube button to go back to the source video ^_^
JoshTriplett 12y ago
Very nice. If this had a simple way to add timed annotations ("#ann=top,10s,18.3s,SomeText" or similar), that'd be absurdly useful. What technology did you build this with? What do you use to decode videos and write out gifs? Here's a useful bookmarklet to apply this to a video: javascript:location.host="gifyoutube.com" EDIT: are you getting hammered by traffic right now? Because I tried this on a 15 second video, and it's been processing for ten minutes.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  YES. IDEA #1 IS GREAT. Will be done! Also thank you for the bookmarklet. I'll PM you about the tech ^_^ As per the edit - yeah a ton of traffic BUT generally right now 98% of GIFs are making. We have a known problem with vevo and other music videos though :(. If you post the YT link I can look into it and see if it's a traffic thing or just one that wouldn't work normally
  - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
    I'll email you about tech* woops
    - zameericle 12y ago
      can I read about the tech as well?
      - stanzheng 12y ago
        Also interested! Could someone maybe elaborate publically, it seems like something people are interested in :)
      - frik 12y ago
        Also interested. mplayer?
    - Phlarp 12y ago
      Me too please!
robszumski 12y ago
Really great idea. A little feedback: the huge animating background is really distracting. It also doesn't play well with click-to-play flash blockers.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  I'm sorry :(. That was totally me. I made sadsquidward.com and riddlydiddly.com a little while ago and just was obsessed with GIFs ahaha. Will definitely change in the next update. I was thinking maybe a very small change just for the lols- like a cloud just drifting by
  - JoshTriplett 12y ago
    Regarding the latter: please provide alternate content (at least a notice) for your <object> tags, for people who don't have flash. If nothing else, you might provide a <video> version, if the content is not interactive. (Then again, if the content is not interactive, you might as well only have a <video> version.)
    - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
      Thank you JT :D
lnanek2 12y ago
Worked good...I'm amazed it hasn't been crashed from being top on Hacker News Oo It mentioned queueing work and things like that, must be impressively well written to not just try every request at once and hose itself.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Ahaha thank you thank you. We ended up being the most upvoted thing on imgur one day ( http://imgur.com/gallery/vSDlg http://imgur.com/gallery/vSDlg ), and we learned a lot of lessons after crashing a lot ahahaha:') I'm actually surprised now too :O
lotharbot 12y ago
As an amateur sportswriter, I expect to be using this a LOT during the upcoming season -- provided there aren't any legal issues with the youtube name, copyright on clips, etc. Took like 15 seconds to make http://share.gifyoutube.com/lcD.gif http://share.gifyoutube.com/lcD.gif (a game-winning shot from a couple seasons back).
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Thank you lotharbot ^_^. We appreciate it! Great GIF btw
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- chatmasta 12y ago
  Shouldn't you be more worried about legal issues of turning a copyrighted broadcast, possibly not even uploaded by the content owner, into a gif?
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    My blog is officially part of one of the content owners' networks. Plus there's the whole "fair use doctrine" that generally allows small snippets for commentary purposes.
    - im3w1l 12y ago
      I've never heard of these networks, mind explaining how it works?
      - lotharbot 12y ago
        Here's the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueHoop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueHoop (we're a part of ESPN.)
mesozoic 12y ago
I love it. You should probably get another domain though for the imminent C&D
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Definitely :3. Any suggestions?
  - adamnemecek 12y ago
    gifi.fi (gifify.com is taken). The domain is as of now not registered.
    - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
      Love all the suggestions guys. Thank you for taking the time to help <3
  - yabatopia 12y ago
    I wanted to suggest gifyoutu.be, but I guess you've got it already.
    - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
      ahahah ;). One of our friends actually got it for a $1 from one of his friends ahahhaha.
  - tim333 12y ago
    giferizer.com? gif.info?
    - swah 12y ago
      I'd suggest .com so you can just double click the youtube word and replace.
  - carbocation 12y ago
innguest 12y ago
Really good idea and well executed. Would you mind saying a few words behind the code? Do you scrape the whole video, or just the part requested? And is the conversion to gif a library or something you wrote? I'm totally ignorant when it comes to scraping videos and converting them, but I find it interesting.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  AWHH! Thank you :D. Sure! I will email you about this :D. Cheers
- swah 12y ago
  I'm also interested in how you're doing this. I also wanted to do youtube previews for a website and this seems strictly superior to the thumbnails they offer :) Also, why don't you throw Adsense on this page?
- yutah 12y ago
  you can also take a look at https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl also to find out how to download Youtube videos
chenster 12y ago
+1 simplicity!
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  tyty :D
midhir 12y ago
So cool, congratulations! I made this in a few seconds - http://share.gifyoutube.com/lin.gif http://share.gifyoutube.com/lin.gif
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  wait until you can add captions ahaha I'm already thinking of a few good ones for this gif
  - midhir 12y ago
    It's begging for captions!
  - zenojevski 12y ago
    What about music? http://phatgifs.com/?v=http%3A%2F%2Fshare.gifyoutube.com%2Flin.gif&s=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DTeKG_KfGTcA&cue=32 http://phatgifs.com/?v=http%3A%2F%2Fshare.gifyoutube.com%2Fl... This seems a perfect match for my audio/video mashupper! It could accept YouTube as video source, but despite my efforts, often gifs still sync better than youtube's quirky player as they are converted to webm automatically.
bkd 12y ago
My videos get stretched from 4x3 to 16:9 (they're stuff I've transferred from film). Example: TcoLoIcxCRg
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Hmmmmm...it's something you'd rather maintain as 4x3 right?
  - bkd 12y ago
    Not necessarily - just something I wanted to mention.
    - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
      will look into seeing if any quality is lost ^_^. cheers
      - georgemcbay 12y ago
        Displaying a video or photo in an incorrect aspect ratio is unequivocally a loss of quality.
scrollaway 12y ago
Are you willing to add a way to easily export to Mediacrush (https://mediacru.sh https://mediacru.sh)? Would be super useful.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Yes definitely. I think the founder of Mediacru.sh posted below - will email him in the coming days :D
cjrd 12y ago
Excellent job! I love url hacking =). I still frequently type "repeat" after "youtube" in order to loop songs, but I probably wouldn't bother to cut and paste the url into a third party site.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  One of the inspirations :')
  - JoshTriplett 12y ago
    Along those same lines, if you feel like doing some related hackery, I'd love to see a youtube video (and audio) reverser. Sometimes people stick reversed audio in their videos, and I'd like to hear it played back the right way around; right now, I do that via youtube-dl and audacity, which is a pain. As far as I can tell, there aren't any reverse video players around at all.
    - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
      hmmm....that would be really interesting. What type of use do you see for it? I think it'd be neat too :O
floodcow 12y ago
This is great! Reddit/4chan and what not is gonna abuse the service. :)
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  it was supposed to be a gift for reddit :')
mkoryak 12y ago
always feel a bit weird when I view the source and find things like this: <font color="#AAAAAA">/watch?v=QgaTQ5-XfMM</font> how does one go about deciding to use such markup?
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  ahahah we kind of just hacked this together for fun. Legacy code, snippets, and just being silly :#
  - mkoryak 12y ago
    Yes, I could tell by the massive amounts of inline css that either this was a hack, or you ran it through mailgun's css inliner. But seriously, if I wanted to add an html tag from 1996 to my site, where is the best place to look for one on the world wide web?
dpweb 12y ago
In case typing "gif" is too much work for you. A Chrome extension.. http://goo.gl/BnRKuN http://goo.gl/BnRKuN
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Haven't downloaded yet, but can't wait to!
TallboyOne 12y ago
http://share.gifyoutube.com/l44.gif http://share.gifyoutube.com/l44.gif
xccx 12y ago
This looks great!! Thanks. Coub.com has great ui for user selecting precise in/out points. http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=WThZsGOVkbk&p=n#/458;464 http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=WThZsGOVkbk&p=n#/458;464 lets you select LOOP in/out right in URL. But neither make GIF, so easy to cut and paste. Feature request: please enable preview of youtube loop right in your url like gifyoutube.com/y0ut0oo0biD&loop=123.4;5.67 where first number is 'start time' then second number is 'length'. And allow millisecond specification. File size could be smaller? EG 0.14 second frames instead of 0.08, longer duration frames aren't too noticable and may cut bulky GIF sizes almost in half.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  I love the feature request! We'll definitely try to implement this (maybe after captions?) File size is something we want to do as well. Working with smallest webm available, but still want the gif size to be smaller
downandout 12y ago
Great job with this. Very useful. The only issue I see is that Google may sue over domain/trademark issues. Facebook has done this to many sites for using "fb" in their domains. While you're getting lots of attention, you may want to offer a browser plugin/extension/bookmarklet that interfaces with the site (have the bookmarklet use a domain less likely to be contested) so that you can keep momentum going if they happen to take your domain.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Definitely; great advice. Thank you downandout :D
- brute 12y ago
  I wouldn't bet on it. http://pwnyoutube.com http://pwnyoutube.com has been around for quite a while now. Although if I remember it right, youtube blocked some IPs associated with tools that let you download/convert videos, as these services violate the terms of use. Btw: I find it nice that this tool supports https. pwnyoutube.com requires you to remove it manually, which makes it so much more inconvenient to use.
- iopq 12y ago
  How about let me google it for you?
  - iopq 12y ago
    Correction: let me google that for you http://lmgtfy.com/ http://lmgtfy.com/
    - tanderson92 12y ago
      Thanks, I couldn't think of a way to find the address of that site.
      - georgemcbay 12y ago
        I'm sure it must be listed in the Yahoo Directory somewhere. https://dir.yahoo.com/ https://dir.yahoo.com/
archon810 12y ago
Looks like it's getting crushed with traffic, so I can't even check it out. But one key feature for me would be the ability to add text to various frames/time ranges. That would make creating GIFs that actually say stuff you can read much easier.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  HMMM. Still working for me :O. Maybe a video that won't be GIF'd? (vevo/music). Sometimes it does stop people though :O. The text thing was going to be our next update mwahahahhaha. Great idea thank you
hellbanner 12y ago
Doesn't load in the same time I watched a 3min video on Vimeo
mac1175 12y ago
I had the SAME idea after seeing not-so-good options out there. Great job! I am interested on how you did this. The conversion speed is really quick!
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  tytyty <3
lelandbatey 12y ago
Wow, talk about a really small world! OP (RoryGlyphic) are you the guy who sent me a text message asking if I'd want to get involved with making a YouTube-to-Gif site (specifically, this conversation[0]). If so, I wanted to say good job on finishing your project, it works great and is easy to use (an much less hackish than my original GifMachine[1]). Also, I'm super excited that something I made a long time ago prompted someone else to make something waaaaay more awesome. Question, you asked about using Gunicorn in our conversation, is this written in Python or is it written using something else? I'm really curious about the technologies you use to make this work! Also of note, why do you ask for a title? I don't see it on the resulting gif page: https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/lP1 https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/lP1 [0] - http://i.imgur.com/KVl7beK.png http://i.imgur.com/KVl7beK.png [1] - http://gifmachine.xwl.me/ http://gifmachine.xwl.me/
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH OMGGGGG!!!!!! THIS IS HILARIOUS HAHAHAHAHAH. Damn this is actually great. We messaged a few people asking to help cut times (which was my biggest pet peeve). No one ever came through :'). For the title, it's just something we're testing out. I love scrolling through the DB etc, and a title makes me laugh ahaha. Maybe we can use it in a future thing? I'm gonna text you ^_^
- zenojevski 12y ago
  Mind if I add some sound to that? http://phatgifs.com/?v=http%3A%2F%2Fshare.gifyoutube.com%2FlP1.gif&s=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dl9ReyBikEjQ&cue=-44 http://phatgifs.com/?v=http%3A%2F%2Fshare.gifyoutube.com%2Fl...
mattl 12y ago
This is neat but putting it in front of the URL gives me: GIFhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ Which doesn't work. I am amazed that Google hasn't complained about the gifyoutube.com domain.
lectrick 12y ago
Now we just need something like this for gfycat.
NamTaf 12y ago
The presentation of the page ("copy pasta z", the fullscreen gif background, the popup in the middle, the banner in the top left) all strike me as being dodgy/malicious and from a site that I'd immediately want to close and never visit again. I'm not sure why you see the need to be so 'internet' with it all when you could do a fully functional equivalent that would be easier on your servers too. Just make it clean and usable and it'll be far better.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Hey Nam! Really appreciate the comment. We were just being silly and hacking away at it adding random things that made us lol hahaha. You're right though. Moving forward minimalist is what we hope to accomplish. Thanks for the feedback ^_^
  - heyadayo 12y ago
    I like the design, all the way down to Copy Past Z. I think grandparent post is out of touch with your target demographic :D
    - NamTaf 12y ago
      On the flipside, I think the target demographic would use it without a second thought regardless of the design because the thing they're after is the end result. They only look at this site for fleeting seconds to develop their gif. Essentially, you're trying to appeal to an already sure audience, and in doing so risk losing out on the 'maybe' audience. I cannot think of a target demographic who would use the site in its current incarnation but would not if it were a cleaner, simpler, "less /b/-inspired" design. I can however think of a demographic who wouldn't use the site unless it were cleaner. edit: This sounds like A/B testing 101 to me.
      - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
        Thank you for the insightful comment Nam ^_^. Will do some AB testing
frickentrevor 12y ago
Seriously what is up with the emotions? You use quite a bit of them. EDIT: The emoticons in your comment replys
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  maaaaan what can I say. Gifs are worth 100x emoticons. But if I can't post gifs, gotta use emoticons
leke 12y ago
This is wonderful.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Thank you :D
fragmede 12y ago
Yes, someone else gets it - keep it simple! I made quietyoutube.com (put 'quiet' in front of any youtube video) and get a page of just the video, nothing else. I made it a couple years arg. Shame I can't get the SSL cert, though the bookmarklet I made works well enough.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Mwahaha TYTY :D
mwhite 12y ago
There seems to be a bug where if you try to create a gif at the same starting point but with a different length than one you've already created for the same video, it only ever returns the original length gif.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Hm. Can you post an example please. Want to solve this ASAP.
personlurking 12y ago
Really cool! One issue I see is when someone uses the same word as title, no one else can use it (as opposed to a number-based titling system where no one would care if /90289432 was in use). Also someone else can peruse other people's gifs by just checking random titles (perhaps a non-issue, though).
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  HMMM. Can you describe the first issue again please? Also sorry for the late response. Not too good at seeing the responses
Shorel 12y ago
Now I only need to send that link to http://www.gfycat.com/ http://www.gfycat.com/ for it to load fast. Full circle!
- agumonkey 12y ago
  It's always good to have bidirectional functions I guess.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  We actually made a webm version! Will update when we release ^_^
- nikolak 12y ago
  Or you could just use gfycat to create both gif and webm versions (up to 15 sec long) directly from youtube, vimeo etc.
brianzelip 12y ago
RoryGlyphic thanks for seeing "the need to be so 'internet'"!
seanewest 12y ago
Awesome idea. https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/qrh https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/qrh
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
georgemcbay 12y ago
This is nice work, but I'll go ahead and be the token negative nancy HN poster and say: Fuck GIF; just because the patent expired doesn't mean we should use this piece of shit (by modern standards) format for things it was never really intended for and for which there are far better solutions, like just linking to the actual video.
im3w1l 12y ago
Cool idea, interface looks nice, but I never actually managed to convert anything. I guess it's because the server is hammered right now.
jonathanmarvens 12y ago
http://gifyoutube.com/gif/sDY http://gifyoutube.com/gif/sDY ← My favorite GIF right now.
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  Love it
leni536 12y ago
Maybe it would be a good idea (or not) to use javascript to ease on server side CPU usage: https://bgrins.github.io/videoconverter.js https://bgrins.github.io/videoconverter.js It's quite bruteforce and it is a really large javascript file, however you could leave out all the unneeded codecs for reducing the size. Also you could first preprocess the video on server side (clipping the time interval, maybe resizing) and only leave the gif encoding to the client.

577 points by RoryGlyphic 12y ago

judk 12y ago

http://makeagif.com/youtube-to-gif http://makeagif.com/youtube-to-gif Surface UI really does make all the difference. Interestingly, makeagif also has trouble with vevo vids.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
The founder of makeagif is nice :D Trouble with vevo vids is in the DL. Vevo does some funky stuff :[

valarauca1 12y ago

This is really cool. And I hate to be that guy, especially so early. But wouldn't it be easier on both networking and cpu to convert it to a webm?

kmizzle 12y ago
Cant email a webm
- Paul_S 12y ago
  How is attaching a gif any different than attaching a webm?
  - ZenoArrow 12y ago
    Some email clients support animated gifs embedded in the main email content. None that I currently use, but I do remember it as a feature in Outlook 2003.
    - tburns 12y ago
      Mail.app on OS X also does this
  - justdropapp 12y ago
    gifs will survive for ever!
RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Absolutely! We actually made a webm version (that's the smallest size to date and the fastest to create), but just wanted to perfect GIF creation and get some captions on the system early before introducing webm. Maybe we should reverse that?
- nmjohn 12y ago
  It depends, who is your actual target audience? If it's a general anyone and everyone, gif is the way to go. If it's a more technical audience, who probably know what webm already is, then webm may make more sense And from a more marketing side of things If you went gif first and five months down the line announcing support for webm makes you look innovative and will probably get you posted to a handful of subreddits and the front page of hn. If you went webm first and five months down the line announce gif support, you probably won't be able to achieve the same results.
  - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
    Definitely. At first we wanted to target general audience and then transition into more technical. It's a little conflicting because I love HN and reddit, so my* general preferences differ from what I think is actually the best transition :3
- jdiez17 12y ago
  If you want to convert GIFs to WebM/MP4/etc you might want to check out the MediaCrush[1] code. Or just use https://mediacru.sh https://mediacru.sh, which is and always will be free. [1]: https://github.com/mediacrush/mediacrush https://github.com/mediacrush/mediacrush
  - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
    Thank you! Are you behind midacru.sh?
    - jdiez17 12y ago
tarr11 12y ago
webm doesn't work on Safari or IE http://caniuse.com/webm http://caniuse.com/webm
- fred_durst 12y ago
  I just call those two SafarIE. Safari is shaping up to be the new IE so we might as well just say them in one phrase instead of always specifying them both.

gus_massa 12y ago

I like that you can choose the starting time directly in the video. But I'd like to choose the finishing time in the video too. (I wouldn't remove the option to choose starting point+lenght).

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Thanks for the feedback! I definitely agree and something we were trying to work on. One thing that's difficult is choosing the finishing time on the video. For example if it's 5 seconds or something, the two end points are really close. What do you think about beta.gifyoutube.com? It's a little different mechanics for choosing start time (which I'm not the best fan of), but maybe it's a little easier for end time. I'm actually not really sure on this. We were going to try some A|B testing but the beta GYT isn't 100% ready
- gus_massa 12y ago
  Clicky: http://beta.gifyoutube.com http://beta.gifyoutube.com I couldn't test it because the video didn't load. I saw the beta UI once (two slice bars), but when I reloaded, the video didn't appear. (I tested IE11 and Chrome) Another small UI complain. If I type in the text box the YouTube address and I hit the enter key, it doesn't get to the edit page. I have to reach for my mouse, and click in the green "Create Gif" button.
  - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
    ahahaha YESSS the create gif enter is something we wanted to change but just never got to :[. Will do soon!
- shaunol 12y ago
  I like this interface over the current one. The only issue I had with it is not having millisecond steps to create a decent loop. I also wasn't getting a thumbnail preview in the black box when seeking the video. Nice useful tool.
  - 12y ago

notastartup 12y ago

Really cool but wonder how youtube's legal department will react to having youtube in the domain name let alone copyright claims. What are you using for the queue?

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Plan was to get a different domain (suggestions?) and fwd it but still have the GYT functionality I'm not 100% sure if youtube minds. Someone from youtube actually put it on one of their videos (a button for it), and then said youtube community department were having fun and spreading it around We don't use a 3rd party queueing software ^_^.
- enraged_camel 12y ago
  >>suggestions? Maybe giftube.com or yougif.com? I'd register those but keep what you currently have for now. Being able to say "put the word gif in front of any youtube url" is just great for user experience.
  - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
    Darn both taking! Will keep thinking :3
  - ada1981 12y ago
    I'd keep the URL functional as a redirect but change the brand... We will give you a free premium listing on BootName.com if you want community support to find a name.
- benjamincburns 12y ago
  I'd suggest talking to a lawyer. My (unsolicited) layman's take: Someone from youtube != Google's legal department, which makes this situation both awesome and sad. If Google wishes to maintain their ownership of the youtube trademark, legally they must enforce their ownership of it (which means either granting you a license, or sending you a C&D). That said, I'd search around for trademark licensing info - they may have an existing license which covers this use. In the mean time you may be able to protect yourself a little by adding some text that says that YouTube is a legally registered trademark of Google, Inc., and this site is not affiliated with Google in any way.

michaelq 12y ago

This is awesome. Less than a minute to create this: https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/kWm https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/kWm

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Mwaha I love it. What's really cool is clicking the View on Youtube button to go back to the source video ^_^

JoshTriplett 12y ago

Very nice. If this had a simple way to add timed annotations ("#ann=top,10s,18.3s,SomeText" or similar), that'd be absurdly useful. What technology did you build this with? What do you use to decode videos and write out gifs? Here's a useful bookmarklet to apply this to a video: javascript:location.host="gifyoutube.com" EDIT: are you getting hammered by traffic right now? Because I tried this on a 15 second video, and it's been processing for ten minutes.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
YES. IDEA #1 IS GREAT. Will be done! Also thank you for the bookmarklet. I'll PM you about the tech ^_^ As per the edit - yeah a ton of traffic BUT generally right now 98% of GIFs are making. We have a known problem with vevo and other music videos though :(. If you post the YT link I can look into it and see if it's a traffic thing or just one that wouldn't work normally
- RoryGlyphic 12y ago
  I'll email you about tech* woops
  - zameericle 12y ago
    can I read about the tech as well?
    - stanzheng 12y ago
      Also interested! Could someone maybe elaborate publically, it seems like something people are interested in :)
    - frik 12y ago
      Also interested. mplayer?
  - Phlarp 12y ago
    Me too please!

robszumski 12y ago

Really great idea. A little feedback: the huge animating background is really distracting. It also doesn't play well with click-to-play flash blockers.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
I'm sorry :(. That was totally me. I made sadsquidward.com and riddlydiddly.com a little while ago and just was obsessed with GIFs ahaha. Will definitely change in the next update. I was thinking maybe a very small change just for the lols- like a cloud just drifting by
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  Regarding the latter: please provide alternate content (at least a notice) for your <object> tags, for people who don't have flash. If nothing else, you might provide a <video> version, if the content is not interactive. (Then again, if the content is not interactive, you might as well only have a <video> version.)
  - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
    Thank you JT :D

lnanek2 12y ago

Worked good...I'm amazed it hasn't been crashed from being top on Hacker News Oo It mentioned queueing work and things like that, must be impressively well written to not just try every request at once and hose itself.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Ahaha thank you thank you. We ended up being the most upvoted thing on imgur one day ( http://imgur.com/gallery/vSDlg http://imgur.com/gallery/vSDlg ), and we learned a lot of lessons after crashing a lot ahahaha:') I'm actually surprised now too :O

lotharbot 12y ago

As an amateur sportswriter, I expect to be using this a LOT during the upcoming season -- provided there aren't any legal issues with the youtube name, copyright on clips, etc. Took like 15 seconds to make http://share.gifyoutube.com/lcD.gif http://share.gifyoutube.com/lcD.gif (a game-winning shot from a couple seasons back).

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Thank you lotharbot ^_^. We appreciate it! Great GIF btw
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
chatmasta 12y ago
Shouldn't you be more worried about legal issues of turning a copyrighted broadcast, possibly not even uploaded by the content owner, into a gif?
- lotharbot 12y ago
  My blog is officially part of one of the content owners' networks. Plus there's the whole "fair use doctrine" that generally allows small snippets for commentary purposes.
  - im3w1l 12y ago
    I've never heard of these networks, mind explaining how it works?
    - lotharbot 12y ago
      Here's the wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueHoop http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueHoop (we're a part of ESPN.)

mesozoic 12y ago

I love it. You should probably get another domain though for the imminent C&D

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Definitely :3. Any suggestions?
- adamnemecek 12y ago
  gifi.fi (gifify.com is taken). The domain is as of now not registered.
  - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
    Love all the suggestions guys. Thank you for taking the time to help <3
- yabatopia 12y ago
  I wanted to suggest gifyoutu.be, but I guess you've got it already.
  - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
    ahahah ;). One of our friends actually got it for a $1 from one of his friends ahahhaha.
- tim333 12y ago
  giferizer.com? gif.info?
  - swah 12y ago
    I'd suggest .com so you can just double click the youtube word and replace.
- carbocation 12y ago

innguest 12y ago

Really good idea and well executed. Would you mind saying a few words behind the code? Do you scrape the whole video, or just the part requested? And is the conversion to gif a library or something you wrote? I'm totally ignorant when it comes to scraping videos and converting them, but I find it interesting.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
AWHH! Thank you :D. Sure! I will email you about this :D. Cheers
swah 12y ago
I'm also interested in how you're doing this. I also wanted to do youtube previews for a website and this seems strictly superior to the thumbnails they offer :) Also, why don't you throw Adsense on this page?
yutah 12y ago
you can also take a look at https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl also to find out how to download Youtube videos

chenster 12y ago

+1 simplicity!

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
tyty :D

midhir 12y ago

So cool, congratulations! I made this in a few seconds - http://share.gifyoutube.com/lin.gif http://share.gifyoutube.com/lin.gif

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
wait until you can add captions ahaha I'm already thinking of a few good ones for this gif
- midhir 12y ago
  It's begging for captions!
- zenojevski 12y ago
  What about music? http://phatgifs.com/?v=http%3A%2F%2Fshare.gifyoutube.com%2Flin.gif&s=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DTeKG_KfGTcA&cue=32 http://phatgifs.com/?v=http%3A%2F%2Fshare.gifyoutube.com%2Fl... This seems a perfect match for my audio/video mashupper! It could accept YouTube as video source, but despite my efforts, often gifs still sync better than youtube's quirky player as they are converted to webm automatically.

bkd 12y ago

My videos get stretched from 4x3 to 16:9 (they're stuff I've transferred from film). Example: TcoLoIcxCRg

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Hmmmmm...it's something you'd rather maintain as 4x3 right?
- bkd 12y ago
  Not necessarily - just something I wanted to mention.
  - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
    will look into seeing if any quality is lost ^_^. cheers
    - georgemcbay 12y ago
      Displaying a video or photo in an incorrect aspect ratio is unequivocally a loss of quality.

scrollaway 12y ago

Are you willing to add a way to easily export to Mediacrush (https://mediacru.sh https://mediacru.sh)? Would be super useful.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Yes definitely. I think the founder of Mediacru.sh posted below - will email him in the coming days :D

cjrd 12y ago

Excellent job! I love url hacking =). I still frequently type "repeat" after "youtube" in order to loop songs, but I probably wouldn't bother to cut and paste the url into a third party site.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
One of the inspirations :')
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  Along those same lines, if you feel like doing some related hackery, I'd love to see a youtube video (and audio) reverser. Sometimes people stick reversed audio in their videos, and I'd like to hear it played back the right way around; right now, I do that via youtube-dl and audacity, which is a pain. As far as I can tell, there aren't any reverse video players around at all.
  - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
    hmmm....that would be really interesting. What type of use do you see for it? I think it'd be neat too :O

floodcow 12y ago

This is great! Reddit/4chan and what not is gonna abuse the service. :)

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
it was supposed to be a gift for reddit :')

mkoryak 12y ago

always feel a bit weird when I view the source and find things like this: <font color="#AAAAAA">/watch?v=QgaTQ5-XfMM</font> how does one go about deciding to use such markup?

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
ahahah we kind of just hacked this together for fun. Legacy code, snippets, and just being silly :#
- mkoryak 12y ago
  Yes, I could tell by the massive amounts of inline css that either this was a hack, or you ran it through mailgun's css inliner. But seriously, if I wanted to add an html tag from 1996 to my site, where is the best place to look for one on the world wide web?

dpweb 12y ago

In case typing "gif" is too much work for you. A Chrome extension.. http://goo.gl/BnRKuN http://goo.gl/BnRKuN

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Haven't downloaded yet, but can't wait to!

TallboyOne 12y ago

http://share.gifyoutube.com/l44.gif http://share.gifyoutube.com/l44.gif

xccx 12y ago

This looks great!! Thanks. Coub.com has great ui for user selecting precise in/out points. http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=WThZsGOVkbk&p=n#/458;464 http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=WThZsGOVkbk&p=n#/458;464 lets you select LOOP in/out right in URL. But neither make GIF, so easy to cut and paste. Feature request: please enable preview of youtube loop right in your url like gifyoutube.com/y0ut0oo0biD&loop=123.4;5.67 where first number is 'start time' then second number is 'length'. And allow millisecond specification. File size could be smaller? EG 0.14 second frames instead of 0.08, longer duration frames aren't too noticable and may cut bulky GIF sizes almost in half.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
I love the feature request! We'll definitely try to implement this (maybe after captions?) File size is something we want to do as well. Working with smallest webm available, but still want the gif size to be smaller

downandout 12y ago

Great job with this. Very useful. The only issue I see is that Google may sue over domain/trademark issues. Facebook has done this to many sites for using "fb" in their domains. While you're getting lots of attention, you may want to offer a browser plugin/extension/bookmarklet that interfaces with the site (have the bookmarklet use a domain less likely to be contested) so that you can keep momentum going if they happen to take your domain.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Definitely; great advice. Thank you downandout :D
brute 12y ago
I wouldn't bet on it. http://pwnyoutube.com http://pwnyoutube.com has been around for quite a while now. Although if I remember it right, youtube blocked some IPs associated with tools that let you download/convert videos, as these services violate the terms of use. Btw: I find it nice that this tool supports https. pwnyoutube.com requires you to remove it manually, which makes it so much more inconvenient to use.
iopq 12y ago
How about let me google it for you?
- iopq 12y ago
  Correction: let me google that for you http://lmgtfy.com/ http://lmgtfy.com/
  - tanderson92 12y ago
    Thanks, I couldn't think of a way to find the address of that site.
    - georgemcbay 12y ago
      I'm sure it must be listed in the Yahoo Directory somewhere. https://dir.yahoo.com/ https://dir.yahoo.com/

archon810 12y ago

Looks like it's getting crushed with traffic, so I can't even check it out. But one key feature for me would be the ability to add text to various frames/time ranges. That would make creating GIFs that actually say stuff you can read much easier.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
HMMM. Still working for me :O. Maybe a video that won't be GIF'd? (vevo/music). Sometimes it does stop people though :O. The text thing was going to be our next update mwahahahhaha. Great idea thank you

hellbanner 12y ago

Doesn't load in the same time I watched a 3min video on Vimeo

mac1175 12y ago

I had the SAME idea after seeing not-so-good options out there. Great job! I am interested on how you did this. The conversion speed is really quick!

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
tytyty <3

lelandbatey 12y ago

Wow, talk about a really small world! OP (RoryGlyphic) are you the guy who sent me a text message asking if I'd want to get involved with making a YouTube-to-Gif site (specifically, this conversation[0]). If so, I wanted to say good job on finishing your project, it works great and is easy to use (an much less hackish than my original GifMachine[1]). Also, I'm super excited that something I made a long time ago prompted someone else to make something waaaaay more awesome. Question, you asked about using Gunicorn in our conversation, is this written in Python or is it written using something else? I'm really curious about the technologies you use to make this work! Also of note, why do you ask for a title? I don't see it on the resulting gif page: https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/lP1 https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/lP1 [0] - http://i.imgur.com/KVl7beK.png http://i.imgur.com/KVl7beK.png [1] - http://gifmachine.xwl.me/ http://gifmachine.xwl.me/

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH OMGGGGG!!!!!! THIS IS HILARIOUS HAHAHAHAHAH. Damn this is actually great. We messaged a few people asking to help cut times (which was my biggest pet peeve). No one ever came through :'). For the title, it's just something we're testing out. I love scrolling through the DB etc, and a title makes me laugh ahaha. Maybe we can use it in a future thing? I'm gonna text you ^_^
zenojevski 12y ago
Mind if I add some sound to that? http://phatgifs.com/?v=http%3A%2F%2Fshare.gifyoutube.com%2FlP1.gif&s=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dl9ReyBikEjQ&cue=-44 http://phatgifs.com/?v=http%3A%2F%2Fshare.gifyoutube.com%2Fl...

mattl 12y ago

This is neat but putting it in front of the URL gives me: GIFhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ Which doesn't work. I am amazed that Google hasn't complained about the gifyoutube.com domain.

lectrick 12y ago

Now we just need something like this for gfycat.

NamTaf 12y ago

The presentation of the page ("copy pasta z", the fullscreen gif background, the popup in the middle, the banner in the top left) all strike me as being dodgy/malicious and from a site that I'd immediately want to close and never visit again. I'm not sure why you see the need to be so 'internet' with it all when you could do a fully functional equivalent that would be easier on your servers too. Just make it clean and usable and it'll be far better.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Hey Nam! Really appreciate the comment. We were just being silly and hacking away at it adding random things that made us lol hahaha. You're right though. Moving forward minimalist is what we hope to accomplish. Thanks for the feedback ^_^
- heyadayo 12y ago
  I like the design, all the way down to Copy Past Z. I think grandparent post is out of touch with your target demographic :D
  - NamTaf 12y ago
    On the flipside, I think the target demographic would use it without a second thought regardless of the design because the thing they're after is the end result. They only look at this site for fleeting seconds to develop their gif. Essentially, you're trying to appeal to an already sure audience, and in doing so risk losing out on the 'maybe' audience. I cannot think of a target demographic who would use the site in its current incarnation but would not if it were a cleaner, simpler, "less /b/-inspired" design. I can however think of a demographic who wouldn't use the site unless it were cleaner. edit: This sounds like A/B testing 101 to me.
    - RoryGlyphic 12y ago
      Thank you for the insightful comment Nam ^_^. Will do some AB testing

frickentrevor 12y ago

Seriously what is up with the emotions? You use quite a bit of them. EDIT: The emoticons in your comment replys

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
maaaaan what can I say. Gifs are worth 100x emoticons. But if I can't post gifs, gotta use emoticons

leke 12y ago

This is wonderful.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Thank you :D

fragmede 12y ago

Yes, someone else gets it - keep it simple! I made quietyoutube.com (put 'quiet' in front of any youtube video) and get a page of just the video, nothing else. I made it a couple years arg. Shame I can't get the SSL cert, though the bookmarklet I made works well enough.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Mwahaha TYTY :D

mwhite 12y ago

There seems to be a bug where if you try to create a gif at the same starting point but with a different length than one you've already created for the same video, it only ever returns the original length gif.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Hm. Can you post an example please. Want to solve this ASAP.

personlurking 12y ago

Really cool! One issue I see is when someone uses the same word as title, no one else can use it (as opposed to a number-based titling system where no one would care if /90289432 was in use). Also someone else can peruse other people's gifs by just checking random titles (perhaps a non-issue, though).

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
HMMM. Can you describe the first issue again please? Also sorry for the late response. Not too good at seeing the responses

Shorel 12y ago

Now I only need to send that link to http://www.gfycat.com/ http://www.gfycat.com/ for it to load fast. Full circle!

agumonkey 12y ago
It's always good to have bidirectional functions I guess.
RoryGlyphic 12y ago
We actually made a webm version! Will update when we release ^_^
nikolak 12y ago
Or you could just use gfycat to create both gif and webm versions (up to 15 sec long) directly from youtube, vimeo etc.

brianzelip 12y ago

RoryGlyphic thanks for seeing "the need to be so 'internet'"!

seanewest 12y ago

Awesome idea. https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/qrh https://www.gifyoutube.com/gif/qrh

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

georgemcbay 12y ago

This is nice work, but I'll go ahead and be the token negative nancy HN poster and say: Fuck GIF; just because the patent expired doesn't mean we should use this piece of shit (by modern standards) format for things it was never really intended for and for which there are far better solutions, like just linking to the actual video.

im3w1l 12y ago

Cool idea, interface looks nice, but I never actually managed to convert anything. I guess it's because the server is hammered right now.

jonathanmarvens 12y ago

http://gifyoutube.com/gif/sDY http://gifyoutube.com/gif/sDY ← My favorite GIF right now.

RoryGlyphic 12y ago
Love it

leni536 12y ago

Maybe it would be a good idea (or not) to use javascript to ease on server side CPU usage: https://bgrins.github.io/videoconverter.js https://bgrins.github.io/videoconverter.js It's quite bruteforce and it is a really large javascript file, however you could leave out all the unneeded codecs for reducing the size. Also you could first preprocess the video on server side (clipping the time interval, maybe resizing) and only leave the gif encoding to the client.