5 Best Free Ways to Turn Video into Animated GIF Images

"A picture is worth a thousand words." If this is true for an ordinary static picture then what about a picture that contains motion or animation? An animation GIFs has far greater impact than an ordinary picture, as it can convey a huge amount of information in just a few silent seconds, that offers many more possibilities to creators/artists. Since GIFs are a lot of fun, but they're even more fun when you can make your own. Did you know how to turn animated GIFs out of your favorite video?

If you have a video clip that would make a good GIF, this article can walk you through the best way for optimizing and converting it into GIFs, and then share them on YouTube etc. instantly. Here's how to do it.

➤ Best free GIF converter 1 - Dimo Video Converter Ultimate

➤ Best free GIF converter 2 - 8K Player

➤ Best free GIF converter 3 - Movie to GIF

➤ Best free GIF converter 4 - Any GIF Animator

➤ Best free GIF converter 5 - GIMP

The best useful way to turn video into GIF images

Animated GIFs have become wildly popular all over social media like Facebook, giphy.com and even on popular websites and blogs too, but if you're not too keen on creating them manually (or simply don't know how), you can download one of the many useful free apps to simplify the process and save time. Many apps also allow you to film right through the app or use existing videos on your device for your GIFs, giving you the opportunity to turn any video into a GIF — from your vacation videos, to the videos you have of your cat. That's why here will shortlist best 5 video to GIF maker programs for your choices.

1. Dimo Video Converter Ultimate

Beyond the general functions of video conversion program, Dimo Video Converter Ultimate is a powerful video converter and GIF maker on PC or Mac. It can allows you to trim video frames, add text, and adjust quality settings, so that you can grab a moment from a YouTube video or favorite movies from torrent sites in all popular video formats like .wmv, .mp4, .mkv, .avi etc. without caring about their subtitles, to make into funny GIFs.

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Key Features of Dimo Video Converter Ultimate:

• An video suite which is comprised of a video editor, GIF animator, video converter, YouTube/Vimeo/Facebook... downloader, 4K/UHD/SD media player and other tools;
• Download favorite videos which you want to turn into GIFs, from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Dailymotion etc. 300+ online video sites;
• Create GIF from all popular video formats like .wmv, .mp4, .mkv, .evo, .dat, .wav, .mpeg and .avi etc. to free from any compatibility issues;
• Edit .gif files with some basic editing tools like trimming, cropping, splitting, rotation, adding watermark and color effects etc.;
• Enable to adjust frame rate, width, height and more when making GIF;
• It is very easy to free use even non-tech beginner can make it without watermark.

Guides to convert video into animated GIFs with Dimo Video Converter Ultimate:

Step 1: Load your video or movie

First of all you need to import your favorite video you desire to output GIF images onto Dimo Video Converter Ultimate window by clicking "Add File".

Step 2: Editing the video

Click "Edit" to activate build-in video editor, then go to "Trim" to simply select the start and end times in the progressing bar by moving the points and click "+" to cut the video and press "OK".

Tip 1: If you think the video containting the embrassing background, then you could click "Adjust" > "Crop" to locate your specific portion of your video in output .gif file.

Tip 2: Click "Effect", you can apply some color effects like de-interace etc; And "Watermark" to input text you like to show;

Step 3: Select GIF as output format

After the video editing done, back to "Converter" window to choose "GIF" file format from "Format" > "Video" > "GIF"

Tip: If your GIF is too big, you could hit the setting gear icon to optimize the frame rate because your computer may not be able to run everything smoothly at a higher frame rate. Most videos are shot at either 30 or 60 fps, but GIFs are meant to be quicker, smaller, and a little jerky looking. The basic principle here is that, the smaller the framerate, the faster the GIF will take to play and load. 10-15 FPS is usually perfect.

Step 4: Start to convert video to GIF

Once you're satisfied, click "Start" to save your video to GIF. Now your .gif file is ready to be used for uploading to Instagram, Imgur, Minus, Dropbox, or any other file hosting service you prefer, or social media posts etc.

2. 8K Player

A simple gif animator, movie and slide show creator.

Integrated with simple offline GIF maker, 8K Player is also a helpful choice for you to convert videos to GIF files. It has a very simple graphical user interface but not fully adjustable by running on OS both Windows and MacOS. This GIF converter is also free to use, and it makes the whole conversion very easy to be done. This program enables you to convert all kinds of video files to animated GIFs within short time.

Key Features:

• This converter is easy to use for beginners to GIF creation by "ONE-KEY"
• It is fully compatible with multiple file types, including MP4, AVI, 3GP, etc.
• Up to 30 seconds for a GIF images creation without watermark;
• The program offers GIF previews and a fast speed to convert videos to animated GIFs.

Step 1: Download and install 8K Player on your computer, then start it;

Step 2: Drag and drop the video you want to get GIF to this media player or click "Open File" from the more icon menu;

Step 3: Click "Output GIF" to locate the video and drag the pin to appoint start time;

Step 4: Hit "GIF" to output your video GIF images and it will automatically open and save in your computer.

Video Tutorial - How To make an Animated GIF from video

3. Movie to GIF

Key Features

• The converter fully supports to convert MP4, AVI, MOV and more videos to GIFs.
• The program allows you to set up starting and ending time of the converted GIF.
• This converter enables you to adjust the frame rate, width, height and more for the converted GIF.
• You are allowed to preview the converted GIF after conversion.
• The color maintains high quality after the conversion.

4. Any GIF Animator

With trimming and customizing features, this video to GIF converter is available free for Windows users. It allows you to convert videos to animated GIF and also make animated GIFs from images.

Key Features:

• Forward and backward looping is possible with this converter
• You can use it to make GIF animations for website, forum profile or blog
• Converted files can be edited (parameters such as frame rate)

5. GIMP

GIF maker on Windows, Mac, and Linux users who don't want to shell out a bunch of cash for Photoshop

GIMP is a free, open source photo editor that aims to have feature parity with Photoshop. But to make GIFs with GIMP, you're going to need both GIMP itself as well as the GIMP Animation Package (or GIMP GAP, for those who like recursive acronyms). Plus, it prefer the video in MP4 format to get a video file of the scene you want to make a GIF out of, while for MKVs, which might cause some artifacting to be difficult to work around.

While these five methods should give just about everyone an option or two of turning video into GIF images, there are dozens of tools out there, and we're sure some of you will have suggestions of your own to email us or or leave a message at Facebook.