Turn your favorite videos into animated GIFs with Imgur’s new Video to GIF tool

By Jason Hahn January 31, 2015

Imgur Video to GIF — Image used with permission by copyright holder

If you’ve ever seen an animated GIF on Reddit – or anywhere on the Internet for that matter – chances are you’re familiar with the image hosting site Imgur. Thanks to a new feature, Imgur has made it easier for the everyday user to turn their favorite video clips into animated GIFs.

Video to GIF is Imgur’s new self-explanatory tool, which allows you to turn online videos into animated GIFs. Simply copy a video’s URL from nearly any popular video hosting site (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo, Vine) and paste it into the Video to GIF site. There aren’t many restrictions on the videos you can convert into GIFs with Imgur’s new tool, save for a 1GB video size limit and a URL that leads directly to the video.

Once you’ve pasted the video’s URL into the Video to GIF site, you’ll see the video playing in the page. You can set the start and end time for the GIF you want to create, and the GIF can be anywhere between 0.5-15 seconds long. You can also add text to the GIF.

After clicking the “Create GIF” button in the lower right of the page, Imgur will process the video and spit out your animated GIF on a Imgur landing page. video-turned-GIFs larger than 10MB will automatically be turned into GIFV files, which are MP4 video files that behave like GIFs.

Imgur notes that Video to GIF is currently available only on its desktop website, not its mobile site. From a few test runs with the tool, it appears that some kinks still need to be worked out – for instance, setting the desired starting time for a GIF seems difficult.

Video to GIF isn’t the GIF-creating tool in town. Sites like GIF YouTube, GIFMaker and Imgflip are among the other GIF tools available.

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Jason Hahn is a part-time freelance writer based in New Jersey. He earned his master's degree in journalism at Northwestern…

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