Usage: ytgif [OPTIONS] <youtube-url> <output_file>

Download the video named in youtube-url and create a gif of it. Will embed the auto-generated subtitles if they're available. You can use the start and finish times to trim it to the duration you'd like.

That gif was generated with:

ytgif -start 74.8 -finish 75.8 -nosubs -trimborders \
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlLMlJ2tDkg" wow.gif

-v:              print more verbose output
-trimborders     automatically trim letterbox borders
-scale n:        scale the video's width to n pixels [default 640]
-fps n:          set the fps of the output gif [default 20]
-gifsicle:       post-process the image with `gifsicle -O2`
-start time:     the time to start the video at
-finish time:    the time to finish the video at
-trim <segment>: comma-separated time to trim from the middle. ex: -trim :40,:49. This is in the timeframe of the clipped video, not the original
-nosubs:         do not include subtitles in the output even if they're available
-sub-lang lang:  sub language to choose
-autosubs:       prefer youtube's auto-generated subtitles
-caption text:   use a caption for the entire gif instead of subtitles
-fontsize:       the font size for the caption. Defaults to 30 if caption set, otherwise to whatever ffmpeg defaults it to
-blisper:        use `blisper` to generate captions (see instructions below)
-blisper-large:  use blisper's "large" model instead of its medium one. May download a large model file

This script is written for modern bash, and won't work on the ancient bash that OS X ships by default. To install a newer bash, use brew install bash. (I tried to work around the old bash, but it's so painful that it makes the script even worse. Sorry)

This script requires ffmpeg and yt-dlp.

• gifsicle is an optional dependency
  • it's used for optimizing gifs as a final pass
• blisper is an optional dependency
  • it's used for generating subtitles for a video that doesn't have them

This script has only been tested on a mac, where brew install bash ffmpeg yt-dlp gifsicle should work to get your dependencies in order. Please report bugs if it fails on other platforms.

note: The default ffmpeg downloaded by homebrew lacks the capability to draw text on gifs, so if you want to use ytgif I recommend building it from source with brew install -s ffmpeg, which produces a more fully-featured ffmpeg.

If you see an error No such filter: 'drawtext', this is probably what's going on.

• ggerganov's superb whisper.cpp is vastly faster than OpenAI's whisper model
• unfortunately, it lacks a good command line UI - the one it ships with requires you to manage your own model files
• so I wrote blisper, which is a simple UI for whisper.cpp that manages model files for you

You can install blisper with brew install llimllib/whisper/blisper if you use homebrew; otherwise you'll have to clone it and build it yourself, unfortunately.

The start and finish times can be specified in seconds, or mm:ss or hh:mm:ss.ms. ffmpeg is flexible in what it accepts. https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Seeking

After installing the prerequisites, copy ytgif.bash to somewhere on your $PATH and rename it ytgif

Download the "I can't believe you've done this" clip, and turn the whole thing into "donethis.gif"

ytgif "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKbU8B-QVZk" donethis.gif

Download the "don't call me shirley" clip from youtube, cut from 1:02 to 1:10.9, lower the fps to 10, and save it as airplane.gif:

ytgif -start 1:02 -finish 1:10.9 -fps 10 \
  "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixljWVyPby0" airplane.gif

Download a bit of a linear algebra lecture, and subtitle it in spanish:

ytgif -sub-lang es -start 26:54 -finish 27:02 \
  "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVKj3LADCnA" strang.gif

Create a tiny rickroll gif, optimize it, and don't include subtitles:

ytgif -gifsicle -scale 30 -start 0.5 -finish 3 -nosubs \
 "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" rickroll.gif

Create a gif of Gob Bluth, and manually set the caption to "I've made a huge mistake":

ytgif -v -start 13 -finish 17 -gifsicle -fps 10 \
 -fontsize 40 -caption "I've made a huge mistake" \
 "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwQW3KW3DCc" mistake.gif

See more examples here: https://github.com/llimllib/ytgif/blob/main/docs/examples.md

• Be careful to quote the youtube URL, if it contains the & character it will not work unless quoted
• ytgif caches downloaded videos in /tmp/ytgif_cache, so you can quickly try edits to the gif without re-downloading videos. These can be quite large, so you may want to clear that folder when you're done making a gif
• youtube's auto subtitles are far from perfect, but often better than nothing