Convert a video to a GIF with reasonable colours

Here’s a little script I wrote to avoid copy-pasting the ffmpeg command from superuser every time I needed it.

It converts a video to a GIF file by pre-calculating a good palette, then using that palette.

Usage:

./to_gif input.mp4 output.gif

The file to_gif (which should be executable):

#!/bin/bash

set -e
set -u

# Credit: https://superuser.com/questions/556029/how-do-i-convert-a-video-to-gif-using-ffmpeg-with-reasonable-quality

INPUT="$1"
OUTPUT="$2"

PALETTE=$(mktemp --suffix=.png)

ffmpeg -y -i "${INPUT}" -vf palettegen "${PALETTE}"
ffmpeg -y -i "${INPUT}" -i "${PALETTE}" \
    -filter_complex "fps=15,paletteuse" "${OUTPUT}"

rm -f "${PALETTE}"

Note: you might want to modify the number after fps= to adjust how fast the video plays.

Update: changed to use mktemp instead of tempfile.

Update: and here is how I add it to the context menu in Caja:

Place the above file in $HOME/bin/to_gif.

Create a file ~/.config/caja/scripts/to_gif (don’t forget to make it executable):

#!/bin/bash

mate-terminal -x "${HOME}/bin/to_gif" "$1" "$1".gif

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