Apple has a different view of how the world should work, and that makes the company’s perspective both good and bad. The good is all the great gadgets we can buy from Apple. What’s not to like?
The bad is when Apple does something that seems odd or strange to long time customers. Remember when iMovie made it easy to grab a freeze frame from a movie clip and save it as a photo? That’s not so easy anymore. In fact, it’s faster and easier to capture freeze frames with GIF Brewery. Plus, you can make GIF animation videos.
GIF Lives!
Without getting into the whole philosophy of using GIF images vs. using JPG images for freeze frame pictures, GIF Brewery is mostly what you think it is. It’s a video-to-GIF creator that converts clips from video files to GIFs. You won’t have to go through the umpteen steps to grab clips to save as photos. GIF Brewery does that with a few clicks. It converts video clips to small GIF files, and even crops or resizes the video.
GIFs can be set to a lower frame rate and frame delay. Loops can be numbered, and direction can be normal, reverse, or palindrome. Your Mac comes with a bunch of Core Image options which GIF Brewery can use– these include sepia tones, color correction and more.
This is where it becomes fun.
GIF Brewery has an option to customize the GIFs with captions. And the captions can be timed to appear exactly when you want it in the GIF playback. Your video clips are valuable so GIF Brewery doesn’t alter the original video. All settings and changes are made only to the GIF itself.
What kinds of movie clips can be modified to become GIFs?
Pretty much everything that QuickTime Player can open and read can be turned into a GIF. This may be the easiest way to capture freeze frames and add a few extras. Resize, crop, and cut the video to whatever size you want. Set the frame rate (remember, GIF videos are really animation), and apply the filters as needed.
The advantage of GIF over JPG is the ability to play frames as an animated movie, though video quality is reduced from typical videos; for example, those captured on your iPhone. Still, what you get is a mini-animation studio that’s priced right, exports wonderful animated video clips, and is easy to master. Plus, you can’t beat the price tag. Lots of four and five star reviews on the Mac App Store and GIF Brewery is free.
