Show HN: Create beautiful animated gifs of your apps

Sir_Cmpwn 12 years ago |

Try HTML5 video instead. GIFs are archaic, low quality, and missing on features.

MediaCrush converts GIFs to video, and will host straight video files. It's open source, you might gain something from browsing the code.

https://mediacru.sh

https://github.com/MediaCrush/MediaCrush

nathanbarry 12 years ago | |

A GIF will play in an email. Unfortunately embedding a video in an email is still not widely supported.

Sir_Cmpwn 12 years ago | | |

And with good reason. I would immediately mark any email that moved as junk.

coralreef 12 years ago | |

Doesn't really make sense for his product, given that he scrolls through a series of screenshots. If he was recording a casting demo, then it might.

Sir_Cmpwn 12 years ago | | |

Forget the stigma that videos have to be paired with audio. A video is a convenient means of making a moving picture. They're easier on bandwidth, higher quality, and more flexible.

coralreef 12 years ago | | |

I like HTML5 vids-as-gifs, but gifs still have some upside. Gifs are still more portable and distributable. In this instance, bandwidth and probably negligible given that there's so few frames in the gif.

Sir_Cmpwn 12 years ago | | |

Portability isn't a concern here. Realistically, an extremely small fraction of your users have unsupported browsers. Maybe some forums won't let you embed video, but if you're building a product site you have the freedom to use whatever you please.

Wouldn't it be nice if your marketing wasn't covered in artifacts? Every GIF on this page is full of artifacts. Would it be valuable for users to be able to pause and appreciate a feature they think is neat?

It's high time for GIFs to die. HTML5 video is a worthy replacement.

comrh 12 years ago | | |

Here. Here. This site just needs the option to outport as WebM.

mnutt 12 years ago | | |

I was also thinking that it would be negligible for slideshow gifs, but the iPhone example went from a 1.5MB gif to a 500KB WebM. Using video means you also remove the 8-bit color restriction that is imposed on gifs. (without hacks, at least)

sloankev 12 years ago | |

You're right, thanks for the advice, I'll look into a video option!

moron4hire 12 years ago | |

except GIFs are everywhere.

tg3 12 years ago | | |

GIFs are a nice compatibility fallback, but HTML5 video should be used where possible. I think that http://gfycat.com/about does this well.

Sir_Cmpwn 12 years ago | | |

Not as well as the site I linked in my comment ;)

ing33k 12 years ago |

I wasted more than 3 hours to create a animation on how to use the web app that I was working on. recorded my screeen using Simgle Screen Resorder [1] .

Converted the recorded video into several images using avconv [2] something like this

  avconv -i  00:00  1.mkv -t 15 op/frame_%03d.jpg

Create a gif using ImageMagick Convert Command-Line Tool [3]

  convert -resize 427x240 op/frame_*.jpg op.gif

Result is 20 mb GIF image.. I had to reduce the frames and some other parameters to reduce the size.

I feel HTML5 video is a better alternative, but I still need a gif.

[1] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/12/simple-screen-recorder-li...

[2] https://libav.org/avconv.html

[3] http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php

robbiep 12 years ago |

Hi there. I have found this quite useful. Was just wondering if there was a reason why there is no more than 5 images supported? The webapp says it is getting 6 files but it doesn't display any when I select 6 images, 5 seems to be the max.

beerbajay 12 years ago |

The images you're displaying on the homepage are downscaled by the browser and look horrible. You see this most in small lines, e.g. the carrier name. You should generally not be producing a single high-resolution GIF but instead a suite of appropriately scaled and resampled images.

mcarrano 12 years ago |

Any plans to support Android devices?

sloankev 12 years ago | |

Yes, absolutely. I just wanted to make sure people were interested in the tool before I put more work into it.