5 ms·

OS X Screencast to animated GIF

94 points by gabamnml 12y ago

proksoup 12y ago
licecap is an application that allows direct screen recording to gif. I personally find it more useful than this OP project, and so wanted to share in case others also find it useful.
- sync 12y ago
  http://www.cockos.com/licecap/ http://www.cockos.com/licecap/ Works super great!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
juandazapata 12y ago
Or just use the free tool LICECAP (http://www.cockos.com/licecap/ http://www.cockos.com/licecap/), record directly from the screen, export to GIF and avoid all that hassle. However, I can see why this could be a cool learning experiment.
- courtewing 12y ago
  If you can get beyond the ancient website design, this is actually an amazingly simple tool. It is trivial to record a small portion of your screen, and it saves directly to your desktop as a gif. No file saving, exporting, etc. At Engine Yard, we use these gifs for UI related pull requests, bug requests, etc. A picture is worth a thousand words, or something like that.
  - petercooper 12y ago
    I use LICEcap a lot too, it's really cool. The only downside is the file sizes can quickly become gigantic compared to MP4. I wonder if imgur's new conversion feature could be useful here though if they're uploaded there..
    - manachar 12y ago
      That's not because of LICEcap, that's because of the nature of gifs. Gifs are a horrible format for longform motion. All Imgur or gyfcat do is convert it from a gif to a mp4. If you're worried about size, just use the mp4.
- pvsnp 12y ago
  Yeah, LICECAP is great. I have taken to using it for providing UI/UX feedback on Design. Just make the GIF, drag into github discussion for the issue or Pull Request. Done. :) It removes a lot of hassle of reproducing the errors for designers from verbal or written instructions. Keycastr is also a good addition to the set of tools, as it can show the exact commands you were entering too.
joelrunyon 12y ago
I like recordit.co
mejackreed 12y ago
There's this gem that simplifies the steps needed. https://github.com/jkeck/make-me-a-gif https://github.com/jkeck/make-me-a-gif . Full disclosure my awesome coworker made it.
colanderman 12y ago
Maybe I'm out of the loop, but isn't a screencast supposed to be live? Like a broadcast? Anyway I bet an actual live broadcast wouldn't be too hard to do, although your poor viewers' browser caches would fill up pretty easy. But then that's what multipart/x-mixed-replace is for.
- protomyth 12y ago
  a lot of Screencasts were Podcasts so live is not required.
swhitt 12y ago
Now we just need ShareX for OS X (and have it deal with the damn hidpi screenshots correctly).
reubenmorais 12y ago
Please mind the accessibility loss when doing something like this in a pull request or, even more importantly, in documentation. Include a text description that's good enough for anyone to grasp what's going on without looking at the GIF. Your vision impaired contributors will thank you. It'll also be friendlier to people who watch repos via email.
dergachev 12y ago
Oh cool this is my old gif gist. I ended up writing a ruby wrapper around it these open source tools, check it out at https://github.com/dergachev/screengif https://github.com/dergachev/screengif
- manto 12y ago
  Thanks for making this. Have you tried to use lossygif https://pornel.net/lossygif https://pornel.net/lossygif (which is based on gifsicle)? We've seen a consistent 20% reduction in file size.
tshadwell 12y ago
byzanz was created for this purpose.
m_mueller 12y ago
I think Sublime's animated image encoder would be a great tool if someone took over support for it. Both compression and quality should be miles ahead of any gif converter, I just think it's a bit too much of a hassle to use. https://github.com/sublimehq/anim_encoder https://github.com/sublimehq/anim_encoder
jameshawkins 12y ago
I highly recommend CloudApp. Hosts screenshots and gifs, auto posts URLs to screenshots to your clipboard. http://www.getcloudapp.com/ http://www.getcloudapp.com/
Aissen 12y ago
Yeah, let's all collectively waste more bandwidth because browsers couldn't agree on a common video codec… At least gfycat and imgur's gifv are try to solve this problem.
Thev00d00 12y ago
Amazing people are still doing this in this age of HTML5 video.

94 points by gabamnml 12y ago

licecap is an application that allows direct screen recording to gif. I personally find it more useful than this OP project, and so wanted to share in case others also find it useful.

sync 12y ago
http://www.cockos.com/licecap/ http://www.cockos.com/licecap/ Works super great!

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

juandazapata 12y ago

Or just use the free tool LICECAP (http://www.cockos.com/licecap/ http://www.cockos.com/licecap/), record directly from the screen, export to GIF and avoid all that hassle. However, I can see why this could be a cool learning experiment.

courtewing 12y ago
If you can get beyond the ancient website design, this is actually an amazingly simple tool. It is trivial to record a small portion of your screen, and it saves directly to your desktop as a gif. No file saving, exporting, etc. At Engine Yard, we use these gifs for UI related pull requests, bug requests, etc. A picture is worth a thousand words, or something like that.
- petercooper 12y ago
  I use LICEcap a lot too, it's really cool. The only downside is the file sizes can quickly become gigantic compared to MP4. I wonder if imgur's new conversion feature could be useful here though if they're uploaded there..
  - manachar 12y ago
    That's not because of LICEcap, that's because of the nature of gifs. Gifs are a horrible format for longform motion. All Imgur or gyfcat do is convert it from a gif to a mp4. If you're worried about size, just use the mp4.
pvsnp 12y ago
Yeah, LICECAP is great. I have taken to using it for providing UI/UX feedback on Design. Just make the GIF, drag into github discussion for the issue or Pull Request. Done. :) It removes a lot of hassle of reproducing the errors for designers from verbal or written instructions. Keycastr is also a good addition to the set of tools, as it can show the exact commands you were entering too.

joelrunyon 12y ago

I like recordit.co

mejackreed 12y ago

There's this gem that simplifies the steps needed. https://github.com/jkeck/make-me-a-gif https://github.com/jkeck/make-me-a-gif . Full disclosure my awesome coworker made it.

colanderman 12y ago

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but isn't a screencast supposed to be live? Like a broadcast? Anyway I bet an actual live broadcast wouldn't be too hard to do, although your poor viewers' browser caches would fill up pretty easy. But then that's what multipart/x-mixed-replace is for.

protomyth 12y ago
a lot of Screencasts were Podcasts so live is not required.

swhitt 12y ago

Now we just need ShareX for OS X (and have it deal with the damn hidpi screenshots correctly).

reubenmorais 12y ago

Please mind the accessibility loss when doing something like this in a pull request or, even more importantly, in documentation. Include a text description that's good enough for anyone to grasp what's going on without looking at the GIF. Your vision impaired contributors will thank you. It'll also be friendlier to people who watch repos via email.

dergachev 12y ago

Oh cool this is my old gif gist. I ended up writing a ruby wrapper around it these open source tools, check it out at https://github.com/dergachev/screengif https://github.com/dergachev/screengif

manto 12y ago
Thanks for making this. Have you tried to use lossygif https://pornel.net/lossygif https://pornel.net/lossygif (which is based on gifsicle)? We've seen a consistent 20% reduction in file size.

tshadwell 12y ago

byzanz was created for this purpose.

m_mueller 12y ago

I think Sublime's animated image encoder would be a great tool if someone took over support for it. Both compression and quality should be miles ahead of any gif converter, I just think it's a bit too much of a hassle to use. https://github.com/sublimehq/anim_encoder https://github.com/sublimehq/anim_encoder

jameshawkins 12y ago

I highly recommend CloudApp. Hosts screenshots and gifs, auto posts URLs to screenshots to your clipboard. http://www.getcloudapp.com/ http://www.getcloudapp.com/

Aissen 12y ago

Yeah, let's all collectively waste more bandwidth because browsers couldn't agree on a common video codec… At least gfycat and imgur's gifv are try to solve this problem.

Thev00d00 12y ago

Amazing people are still doing this in this age of HTML5 video.