Convert HLS video (mp4) into Gif with CLI shorthand

by saiday

Whatever Gif is the old or new sexy. You needed it anyhow.

Dependencies and Prerequisites:
  • ffmpeg
  • imagemagick

Use Homebrew or any other package manager to install them. 

$ brew update
$ brew install ffmpeg
$ brew install imagemagick
How to use

For example, you'd like to convert https://video.twimg.com/hls/_video.m3u8 to gif. 

$ mkdir mp4_to_gif
$ ffmpeg -i myfile.mp4 -vf scale=420:-1:flags=lanczos,fps=10 mp4_to_gif/ffout%03d.png
$ convert -loop 0 mp4_to_gif/ffout*.png output.gif
$ rm -rf mp4_to_gif
What you really need

Edit your shell run commands (bashrc, zshrc), add this alias: 

alias v2g='function _v2g(){ mkdir mp4_to_gif && ffmpeg -i $1 -vf scale=420:-1:flags=lanczos,fps=10 mp4_to_gif/ffout%03d.png && echo "converting gif ..." && convert -loop 0 mp4_to_gif/ffout*.png output.gif && rm -rf mp4_to_gif };_v2g'

You can now perform the operation as following: 

$ v2g https://video.twimg.com/hls/_video.m3u8