Gif2gfy

An FFmpeg frontend for converting gifs into standalone gfy files.

What is a gfy?

As coined by Gfycat:

A gfy is a short, looped, soundless video moment that includes GIF as one
of the available formats.

The name stands for "GIF Format Yoker" (we pronounce it "jiffy"). And the
purpose is to bridge the gap between gif and html5 video by providing
both-- allowing users much faster delivery, and more playback options

Goals of this project

One particular shortcoming of Gfycat's gfy format is not being able to be saved to the desktop and shared as a single file, which is an advantage gif has enjoyed since its inception in 1987.

Gif2gfy overcomes Gfycat's lack of desktop support by distilling the essence of the gfy format, i.e., a looping video, and putting it into a self-contained HTML5 container for easy saving.

The ultimate goal of this project is to become redundant with the advent of proper replacements for the gif format. In the meantime, this project serves as a stopgap solution so that users can benefit from much smaller and smoother animations.

Dependencies

• ffmpeg
• python2.7 or newer

Installing FFmpeg in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

Current releases of Ubuntu don't have FFmpeg in the main repository, but adding a PPA is a simple solution:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:mc3man/trusty-media
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y ffmpeg

Using Linux static builds

Alternatively, static builds endorsed by the FFmpeg project can be found at the link below:

http://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/  

An example of using Gif2gfy with static 64-bit FFmpeg:

mkdir ffmpeg
wget http://johnvansickle.com/ffmpeg/releases/ffmpeg-2.4.2-64bit-static.tar.xz
tar xf ffmpeg-2.4.2-64bit-static.tar.xz -C ffmpeg --strip-components 1
gif2gfy -p ffmpeg/ -i infile.gif

Usage

####Getting information

$ gif2gfy -h
usage: gif2gfy [-h] -i INFILE [-c COLOR] [-f FORMAT] [-o OUTFILE] [-p PATH]
               [-q QUALITY] [-t TITLE] [-v]

An FFmpeg frontend for converting gifs into standalone gfy files.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i INFILE, --infile INFILE
                        Input file
  -c COLOR, --color COLOR
                        Choose background color of gfy; default is black
  -f FORMAT, --format FORMAT
                        Choose output format to convert gifs to; default is
                        webm
  -o OUTFILE, --outfile OUTFILE
                    Set filename of output; default is o.(mp4|webm).html
  -p PATH, --path PATH  Specify a custom directory to look for FFmpeg and
                    FFprobe
  -q QUALITY, --quality QUALITY
                        Set bitrate in MBs for gif-to-webm conversion; default
                        is 2
  -t TITLE, --title TITLE
                        Set title in HTML page; default is whatever -o is set
                        to
  -v, --video           Output pure video instead of HTML