James Delahunty
12 Dec 2014 6:04
YouTube has quietly added a neat little animated GIF creator to some of its YouTube videos.
Spotted by Andy Baio, YouTube added an option to create a GIF to the share options of a select few channels. For example, the PBS Idea Channel seems to be covered by YouTube's experimental GIF creator.
It allows you to create an animated GIF of up to five seconds in length from any consecutive five second portion of the video. It also allows you to add text to the top and bottom of the resulting GIF, which will be hosted on YouTube's own servers and which you can embed elsewhere just as you can with videos.
YouTube hasn't revealed what its larger plan is for the GIF creator; will it come to all videos that can be shared? Will it have to be opt in on behalf of the content creator.
If it does end up being available for the majority of all YouTube videos, then you'd better be prepared to see a lot more GIFs around than you already do!