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@timyates
Created July 30, 2015 08:14
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Generating terminal gifs on OS X the free way

Didn't work any of this out, I just stuck things together that I found on the web

First, install the things:

brew install imagemagick
brew install ffmpeg

Then, I have a small (600px wide) iTerm window with a big font. Load Quicktime, and record screen (just the area of the terminal)

Trim and save the mov somewhere (lets say ~/Documents/term.mov)

Then, do:

cd ~/Documents
mkdir movanim
cd movanim

# This will render the mov to individual pngs (at 10fps) at a
# width of 500px (which is approximately the size twitter shows them as)
ffmpeg -i ../term.mov -vf scale=500:-1 -r 10 ./ffout%4d.png

# Then this will convert the pngs to a gif (8ms delay between frames loop forever)
# and optimise it as best as it can (the -layers flag)
convert -delay 8 -loop 0 -layers Optimize ffout*.png animation.gif
@netzwerg
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Works like a charm, tx!

@andyinabox
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This is great, thanks! I forked your version and added a bash script here: https://gist.github.com/andyinabox/aa8d2584f9700a6183b6

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