VLC gif generator

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Demo

Watch the tool in action

I wrote this tool because I wanted to create gifs quickly and efficiently. This tool allows you to effortlessly create gifs from VLC. Big shoutout to moviepy. I wouldn't have thought of writing this tool if it was not for that library.

How it works

You start by playing a video in VLC. Whenever you see a scene that you like, you hit the action key which triggers the tool to connect to VLC's http server to grab metadata about the video your currently watching. The tool then creates a gif of n seconds long starting from where you were in the video.

Setup

First off you need to install VLC media player

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Then configure the VLC http server

First click on Tools > Preferences

Then click on select all

Click on web interface

Set a password for the web interface (username not necessary)

Once VLC is setup you can begin installing the python package

Only tested on linux might also work on MacOS

Make sure you have python3.6+ installed

sudo pip install git+https://github.com/pydo/vlc-gif-creator.git

or use a virtualenv

You should now have gifcreator available in your $PATH

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Configuration

This tool uses a config file for connecting to VLC's http server and for creating the GIFs. After calling gifcreator you will have a this config file $HOME/.gif_creator.config.ini in your home directory.

Example config file

[VLC CREDENTIALS]
user =
password = root123
[VLC SERVER]
status = http://localhost:8080/requests/status.xml
playlist = http://localhost:8080/requests/playlist.xml
[CROPPING]
resize = .70
[GIF]
length = 2
name = gif_name
output_path = ./awesome_gifs

Note

Not affiliated with VLC in any way.

License