You may have noticed: I create lots of GIFs.
You may have wondered: how does Jake make his GIFs?
I ❤️ the functionality of creating them in Camtasia 2 for Mac. Under Advanced Export is an option for “Animated GIF.” It’s pretty much that simple….
However, if you choose to do this, you want to put some thought into how & where you plan to use your GIF. Certain platforms have time & file size limits for GIFs. Others do not. Twitter, for example, limits GIFs to 5 MB. To obtain the perfect balance between high quality image and low enough file size, I leave the settings all of the way up and then nudge them down until I hit something just a hair under 5 MB. I prefer the frame rate at 30 and won’t go below 20. If a frame rate of 20 doesn’t get me low enough, I decrease the dimensions. If needed, I even use custom dimensions to hit that sweet spot of quality-file size. (More content after GIF)
Twitter doesn’t appear to have a limit for the time length of the GIF. However, the longer the GIF, the higher the file size. So, I cut my GIF’s at 20 seconds. That was always the limit for GIFs in the SnagIt extension, and it seems like a good number, so I go with it. To hit this limit, I increase the speed of my videos to get them right to 20 seconds.
(When I last checked, Google Apps for Education Certified Trainers received Camtasia for free. If you’re not eligible for that I believe it’s well worth the actual education price.)