GIFs, or is it JIFs?
Either way, today
we’re going to take an in depth look
at making these in Final Cut Pro,
with a custom Apple Compressor preset.
Hey guys, whats up.
This is Serge, and welcome back to my channel.
Using GIFs is a great way to spice up your website,
promote your content,
or step up your twitter game,
especially when these are set up to loop,
or play over and over.
GIFs can easily be made
by using an online service, free of charge, but,
if you own Final Cut Pro and Apple’s Compressor,
you can add a custom export preset
to export GIFs directly from Final Cut Pro.
First, to make a GIF,
you need to start with a video clip.
Theoretically, you can make it as long as you want,
but generally GIFs are meant to be nice and short,
around 2 - 6 seconds long.
Once you have your clip,
lets first take a look at Compressor’s built in presets.
In the top right corner,
hit the share button and select Add Destination.
Double click the Compressor Settings,
and from the Built In folder,
select Motion Graphics.
From here you can select Animated Image Large,
or Animated Image Small.
Add either one, or both of these to your share presets.
Close your destinations window,
hit the share button again,
and select your share preset for your GIF.
Selecting Animated Image Large
will export a GIF file thats
640 pixels wide by 360 pixels tall,
and is optimized for best quality playback.
A 4 second video exported as a GIF in this format
will be approximately 16 MB.
Animated Image Small preset is
428 pixels wide by 240 pixels tall,
and is played back only at 15 frames per second.
This format is optimized for messaging and websites,
and the same 4 second video file
is only approximately 4 MB,
considerably smaller than animated image large.
You can also make your own custom preset
for exporting GIFs from Final Cut Pro.
To make a custom setting,
open up Compressor,
click on the Settings and Locations button
to open up the sidebar,
and in the bottom left corner
click on the plus sign and select New Setting.
From the format dropdown menu,
select Image Sequence and give it a name.
Now, over in the inspector,
from the Image Type dropdown menu
select GIF,
and select the Animated checkbox.
Next, you can choose whether your playback
will be continuous,
or you can choose to stop playback
after a selected number of plays.
Selecting continuous
will loop your GIF playback over and over.
This is great for cinemagraphs,
where you can get continuous motion in your image.
Next in the video tab of the inspector,
you can select a video resolution,
and playback frame rate.
Selecting Automatic will keep the same
frame rate as your source clip.
Next, close Compressor
and go back to Final Cut Pro.
To export your GIF by using your custom preset,
once again hit the share button,
and select Add Destination.
Double click compressor settings,
and your presets you just made
will be in your Custom folder.
Hit OK,
and close your settings window.
Now, hit the share button again
and select your new export preset
to export your video clip as a GIF.
So, next time you need to upload a still image to your website,
or you need some promotion material
for your latest video to share on social media,
consider making a GIF.
It’s not going to be ideal every time,
but the small file size of GIFs
may be exactly what you need.
If you enjoyed this video, make sure to hit the like button,
and subscribe to my channel for more Final Cut Pro tutorials.
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so turn on notifications to make sure you don’t miss them.
Thanks for watching, and I hope to see you back next week.