Ask HN: How to make quick help GIFs?

1 pointcodewithcheese3 comments

Hi, anyone know how I can easily create short little videos/GIFs that show me clicking around a website with zoom in and out?

I'm working on a help section and I would like to add more than just static screenshots.

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Firstly I'd suggest getting a screen recorder for your OS. There are quite a lot of good ones out there, even non root ones for Android.

I'm happy to recommend some for Linux and Android if you need me to.

After that there are several tools to convert your video into a GIF. Do be aware of the colour limitations of GIFs however.

If you want easy: GifCam (make sure to get from the official dev [0]). It lacks zoom in/out features but is one of the easiest way to creates gifs on Windows.

If you want zoom in/out (not as easy) you'll need to record a video where this is a feature, then convert the video to a .gif. I know Camtasia Studio can do this. I never found it all that intuitive and it would often zoom when I didn't want it to, but I didn't spend long learning the specifics so I factor that as user error.

[0] http://blog.bahraniapps.com/gifcam/

Another free and easy option is LICEcap. It also doesn't do zoom in/out as far as I can tell.

http://www.cockos.com/licecap/

And no, I don't have any idea why it's called LICEcap.

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