Last Friday, we featured one graphic designer’s incredible X-ray GIFs, focusing on the process by which he converted segments of video into the short, repeated clips we see so often online. The software he used to create the GIFs can be fairly expensive, but as Hacker News demonstrates, there’s an easy way to convert a section of any YouTube video into a GIF straight from your browser.
All you have to do is find a video with a clip you’d like to make a GIF of, put “gif” into the URL right before YouTube and you’ll be taken to a new page which lets you decide the start time and the duration of the GIF.
For example, I made a GIF from the famous Evolution of Dance video by taking the following URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg
…and turning it into this:
https://www.gifyoutube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg
Here’s my final product:
A few things worth noting: First off, as TechCrunch mentions, this isn’t an official YouTube extension, so don’t be surprised if it ends up being taken down by Google eventually. (That said, YouTube Doubler has stayed online for years, so GIF YouTube might be here to stay.) Second, the tool is still in a relatively early stage of development, so you won’t be able to get a perfect GIF every time. Here’s hoping individual frame selection makes its way into a future update.
