As the new year approaches, everyone is taking a look back at all the progress and major events that happened over the last year. For social media, many updates and innovations have taken place, and a few days ago, another one was quietly rolled-out.
Without any fanfare, Youtube introduced their own built-in GIF creator last week on a very select few channels. While the ability to make GIFs out of Youtube videos has been available for a while, this is the first time such a major online video sharing site gave its users the ability to make GIFs directly on the site itself. According to various reports, the only channels that (thus far) have the new feature are VSauce, PBS Idea Channel, and It’s Okay to Be Smart (no word on how or why those particular ones were chosen).
The tool is pretty straightforward: if you click on “Share” beneath the video, select the GIF option to choose your time frame. You will see a frame by frame of the video, and from there, you can choose up to six seconds of a video to create your GIF. If you so desire, you can also add text to the bottom and/or top of the GIF. All that is left is to hit “Create GIF” and voila! You will be provided with both embed and direct links, along with other options to show off your new creation, wherever you please.
The desire to have an easy option for creating Youtube GIFs is not a recent subject: about a year ago, Tech Crunch wrote an article expressing the need for Youtube to create a GIF maker. While Youtube only has the option available on those few mentioned channels right now, it is a good bet that the option will start becoming available on more channels.
GIFS have grown from being somewhat of a joke to an incredibly popular form of online communication. There are reaction GIFS, GIFS of human fails, GIFs of dogs, GIFs of cats, and many more. While Youtube’s GIF creator might be of limited usefulness right now, it will be interesting to see if, when, and how Youtube expands the feature to other channels.
In the meantime, there are several different third-party applications that will allow you to make a gif out of a Youtube channel that does not (yet) have the “create GIF” option. So you don’t have to wait to make that perfect GIF.
Sources: Tech Crunch and TubeFilter