A little shell script to put in your PATH if you forget the ffmpeg options to turn a video into an animated GIF.

gif

#!/bin/sh

# Turn a video file into an animated GIF

USAGE="usage: gif video_file [gif_file]"

video_file=$1

if [ "$video_file" = "" ]; then
    echo $USAGE
    exit
elif [ $2 ]; then
    gif_file=$2
else
    gif_file="${video_file%.*}.gif"
fi

echo "converting ${video_file} to ${gif_file} ..."

ffmpeg -i "${video_file}" -vf "fps=10,scale=1000:-1:flags=lanczos,split[s0][s1];[s0]palettegen[p];[s1][p]paletteuse" -loop 0 "${gif_file}" -loglevel error