Show HN: Convert online videos to .gif • Hacker News Board

The elements are a bit too small to get accurate results. An indicator for when the 5 second limit is reached would be appreciated. Also, please indicate how long I have to wait, it has been splitting video for a long time now.

Re: Show HN: Convert online videos to .gif

#16

Post by lmroz » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 5:40 PM UTC

Great tool! Is there a way to add static text?

The 2 usability recommendations I would add are:

1) Tell me how long my video clip is. (Don't make me keep guessing if I am in the 5 second range).

2) After creating the gif, if I don't like it let me go back to the editing screen with the last settings I used. I trimmed a youtube video down in the editor, but when the gif was created a few extra frames seemed to appear in the final product.

Re: Show HN: Convert online videos to .gif

#17

Post by khakimov » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 5:56 PM UTC

Probably will be better to serve static content only by nginx. http://forgif.me/assets/132.gif error from rails.

maybe this will help http://27smiles.com/2008/05/22/setting-up-nginx-with-rails/

Re: Show HN: Convert online videos to .gif

#18

Post by jeffehobbs » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 6:05 PM UTC

Excellent work! Love this.

Re: Show HN: Convert online videos to .gif

#19

Post by bloggergirl » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 6:50 PM UTC

sgehlich wrote: post #9

citricsquid wrote: post #5

I really like the interface, it's very clever, only problem I'm having is you have the 5 second gif limit but that isn't explained anywhere and there's no indication of how long 5 seconds is on the timeline. I would suggest having the pink bar (that indicates the current length) grey out after 5 seconds of time, so if the selected portion is 10 seconds long have 50% of it grey. I've used another site for this before…

Thanks for your suggestion, I really appreciate it! The idea of greying the indicator out is nice, I'll implement it tomorrow. Yes, we were already thinking about providing such a premium service, we'll see what we can do. Right now it's just an experiment, let's hope it'll get bigger :) Edit: We slice the video into frames by using ffmpeg. Unfortunately, the gif encoder of ffmpeg uses a pretty bad color palette, I a…

I happen to like the grainy feel, actually. It's like a filter from the 70s --- you could position it as the "forgif.me" look-and-feel, in an Instagram sort of way. HD isn't always better. :)

One recommendation, in addition to other people's notes about messaging the 5-sec limit: Try adding a line of copy on your home page indicating what this site is / what to do there. The HN post title you used could do the trick --- as it obviously worked for everyone who clicked thru and tried it (myself included).

Re: Show HN: Convert online videos to .gif

#20

Post by sgehlich » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 7:28 PM UTC

lmroz wrote: post #16

Great tool! Is there a way to add static text? The 2 usability recommendations I would add are: 1) Tell me how long my video clip is. (Don't make me keep guessing if I am in the 5 second range). 2) After creating the gif, if I don't like it let me go back to the editing screen with the last settings I used. I trimmed a youtube video down in the editor, but when the gif was created a few extra frames seemed to appear…

Yup, static text is one of the features we are planning for this tool. Currently we round the start and end time (which will be fixed tomorrow) so you won't get very precise results. Also, a "change settings" button will be implemented / we will load the given settings if you reopen the editor.