Good Windows GIF Editor?

[GrungeBunny]

Hi everyone!

I'm new-ish to the cam world. Been at this for approx 2 years now. I am *Just* now learning the importance of GIFs, and I am a total newb lol. I used to be good with photoshop, but lost my way over the past decade. I tried using it to make a gif from a 10 minute vid, but it made a gazzilion layers in the timeline, and I got overwhelmed and closed it.

I usually run to youtube for how-to's but the ones I found were either for making photos into a gif, or for uploading a short video to make into a gif, nothing addressed using a longer video to make a short gif.

Also, maybe I'm just paranoid, but I am a little worried about using online sources to create my gifs. I feel that if I have to upload my lengthy vid to their site to create the gif, than my vid is probably being stored on one of their servers somewhere, and that gives me nightmares about my vids being handed out for free on sites I'm not even aware of (Which I know is bound to happen at some point but I'd like to prevent it as much as possible)

Is there a simple(ish) downloadable program I can use to select multiple short sections of a longer vid? It would also be super helpful if I could see what the total length of all of those short selections is (I think most gifs are usually about 7 secs?).

I tried different links from other threads, but this thread is most current and seems more on par with what I need assistance with.

Thanks in advance

 

[Smores]

Also, maybe I'm just paranoid, but I am a little worried about using online sources to create my gifs. I feel that if I have to upload my lengthy vid to their site to create the gif, than my vid is probably being stored on one of their servers somewhere, and that gives me nightmares about my vids being handed out for free on sites I'm not even aware of (Which I know is bound to happen at some point but I'd like to prevent it as much as possible)

I had the same concern with using online GIF generators, and since I am uploading video of other people who trust me to protect their rights and privacy, I do not feel like rolling dice.

Is there a simple(ish) downloadable program I can use to select multiple short sections of a longer vid? It would also be super helpful if I could see what the total length of all of those short selections is (I think most gifs are usually about 7 secs?).

I tried different links from other threads, but this thread is most current and seems more on par with what I need assistance with.

Thanks in advance

The procedure I have so far is to use Sony Movie Studio Platinum 15, which costs under $100 and is absolutely fantastic, to generate a 248x80 MP4. I think CB has a 250x80 limit on size to have the animation not start up in a frozen state, but I discovered that some GIF making software wants the numbers to be divisible by four, so I had to lower to 248x80.

Sony Movie Studio gets me to 248x80 in either the AVI or MP4 file formats. I then feed that to the Easy GIF Animator application mentioned in this thread. That application is kind of so-so. The alternative would be Photoshop CC, which would allow more control but also has more complexity. And like you I do not want to become a Photoshop expert, so I value simple special-purpose apps for this.

So far the weak link in all of this is the conversion from MP4 to GIF. I think Adobe Premiere would do that better, but that's a sizable commitment for the next five years since everything they do on the high end now appears to be based on monthly rentals.