Hi!

I was curious what you guys are using for making .gif captures. I usually use giffing tool, but the owner is a dick and won't respond to emails I've sent regarding upgrades (I have a paid license, order #, original email, etc)

Anyway, looking into alternatives.

I know you can use photoshop which I have, but photoshop won't open .flv (iirc) and I'm trying to avoid converting hundreds of vids just to make clips.

I'd use .webm for everything, but infranview doesn't handle the filetype well and I'd like to include my animated loops in directories with other file types.

Thanks!

high-quality gifs

Well, as high quality as gifs can be. They are pretty limited and can bloat up pretty fast.

I usually use giffing tool, but the owner is a dick and won't respond to emails I've sent regarding upgrades (I have a paid license, order #, original email, etc)

WOAH NOPE!
I dislike automatic tools that you use by selecting area of the screen so fucking much or basically any gif making software, but if you even paid for some tools I just feel bad for you, especially when you can't get support as paying customer :|

But basically any photo manipulation software will do. Photoshop is one, I personally only use gimp. Krita was apparently getting animation plugin and it seems to have been gaining popularity. Of course the source material has to be in image sequence before opening it as layers in gimp, so the approach differs from what material you are working on and from where.

I know you can use photoshop which I have, but photoshop won't open .flv (iirc) and I'm trying to avoid converting hundreds of vids just to make clips.

I'd use .webm for everything, but infranview doesn't handle the filetype well and I'd like to include my animated loops in directories with other file types.

Flash video (flv) and WebM are video files, so you need to use software that can handle videos with those. Gif is animated image format, there's also Apng and WebP, but at least gimp doesn't seem to support either.
Ffmpeg is swiss knife which can manage videos, image sequences and gifs. So if you have source as flv, it can convert it to webm, gif (with bayer dithering) or image sequence to handle with image manipulation software like gimp (positioned, floyd-steinberg and no dithering). Usually positioned is the best, but bayer might be good with material moving much or no dithering with pixel art.

I have gathered some of my thoughs to semi-tutorial directly to my profile bio.

If you need to combine, cut or do similar editing, you basically want some sort of video editing software. All of them are able to export at least in sequence, if no directly to gif.

Wow great post! Thanks!

PS - Your profile is a goldmine of useful info on tons of stuff O.O

GIMP has a few ways for making gifs, including using transparent layers in way similar to using traditional animation cels (I think)or using each layer as a frame.

GIMP-GAP is also something you should consider if already using GIMP - it's designed for video editing, and so works extremely well with '1 frame / file' series.

One major advantage to using GIMP-GAP is it's possible to use as many layers as you want per frame, so if you want to overlay informational texts, for example, that's much easier than with GIMP's base animation system.

I use Photoshop. It takes a long time.

It's pretty easy if you use the Animation tool In Photoshop.