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ytgif

★ 62 Open GitHub ↗

Create a gif from a youtube video with subtitles enabled, using yt-dlp and ffmpeg

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# ytgif

Usage: `ytgif [OPTIONS] <youtube-url> <output_file>`

Download the video named in youtube-url and create a gif of it. Will embed the auto-generated subtitles if they're available. You can use the start and finish times to trim it to the duration you'd like.

![](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/llimllib/ytgif/main/docs/gifs/wow.gif)

That gif was generated with:

```shell
ytgif -start 74.8 -finish 75.8 -nosubs -trimborders \
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlLMlJ2tDkg" wow.gif
```

## OPTIONS

```
-v:              print more verbose output
-trimborders     automatically trim letterbox borders
-scale n:        scale the video's width to n pixels [default 640]
-fps n:          set the fps of the output gif [default 20]
-gifsicle:       post-process the image with `gifsicle -O2`
-start time:     the time to start the video at
-finish time:    the time to finish the video at
-trim <segment>: comma-separated time to trim from the middle. ex: -trim :40,:49. This is in the timeframe of the clipped video, not the original
-nosubs:         do not include subtitles in the output even if they're available
-sub-lang lang:  sub language to choose
-autosubs:       prefer youtube's auto-generated subtitles
-caption text:   use a caption for the entire gif instead of subtitles
-fontsize:       the font size for the caption. Defaults to 30 if caption set, otherwise to whatever ffmpeg defaults it to
-blisper:        use `blisper` to generate captions (see instructions below)
-blisper-large:  use blisper's "large" model instead of its medium one. May download a large model file
```

## PREREQUISITES

This script is written for modern bash, and won't work on the ancient bash that OS X ships by default. To install a newer bash, use `brew install bash`. (I tried to work around the old bash, but it's so painful that it makes the script even worse. Sorry)

This script requires [`ffmpeg`](https://ffmpeg.org/) and [`yt-dlp`](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp).

- [`gifsicle`](https://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/) is an optional dependency
  - it's used for optimizing gifs as a final pass
- [`blisper`](https://github.com/llimllib/blisper) is an optional dependency
  - it's used for generating subtitles for a video that doesn't have them

This script has only been tested on a mac, where `brew install bash ffmpeg yt-dlp gifsicle` should work to get your dependencies in order. Please report bugs if it fails on other platforms.

**note**: The default `ffmpeg` downloaded by homebrew lacks the capability to draw text on gifs, so if you want to use `ytgif` I recommend building it from source with `brew install -s ffmpeg`, which produces a more fully-featured ffmpeg.

If you see an error `No such filter: 'drawtext'`, this is probably what's going on.

## WHY BLISPER?

- ggerganov's superb [whisper.cpp](https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp/tree/master) is vastly faster than OpenAI's whisper model
- unfortunately, it lacks a good command line UI - the one it ships with requires you to manage your own model files
- so I wrote blisper, which is a simple UI for whisper.cpp that manages model files for you

You can install blisper with `brew install llimllib/whisper/blisper` if you use homebrew; otherwise you'll have to clone it and build it yourself, unfortunately.

## TIME

The start and finish times can be specified in seconds, or mm:ss or hh:mm:ss.ms. ffmpeg is flexible in what it accepts. https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Seeking

## INSTALLING

After installing the prerequisites, copy `ytgif.bash` to somewhere on your `$PATH` and rename it `ytgif`

## EXAMPLES

Download the "I can't believe you've done this" clip, and turn the whole thing into "donethis.gif"

ytgif "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKbU8B-QVZk" donethis.gif

Download the "don't call me shirley" clip from youtube, cut from 1:02 to 1:10.9, lower the fps to 10, and save it as airplane.gif:

ytgif -start 1:02 -finish 1:10.9 -fps 10 \
      "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixljWVyPby0" airplane.gif

Download a bit of a linear algebra lecture, and subtitle it in spanish:

ytgif -sub-lang es -start 26:54 -finish 27:02 \
      "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVKj3LADCnA" strang.gif

Create a tiny rickroll gif, optimize it, and don't include subtitles:

ytgif -gifsicle -scale 30 -start 0.5 -finish 3 -nosubs \
     "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ" rickroll.gif

Create a gif of Gob Bluth, and manually set the caption to "I've made a huge
mistake":

ytgif -v -start 13 -finish 17 -gifsicle -fps 10 \
     -fontsize 40 -caption "I've made a huge mistake" \
     "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwQW3KW3DCc" mistake.gif

See more examples here: https://github.com/llimllib/ytgif/blob/main/docs/examples.md

## NOTES

- Be careful to quote the youtube URL, if it contains the & character it will not work unless quoted
- ytgif caches downloaded videos in `/tmp/ytgif_cache`, so you can quickly try edits to the gif without re-downloading videos. These can be quite large, so you may want to clear that folder when you're done making a gif
- youtube's auto subtitles are far from perfect, but often better than nothing

ytgif

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