Hello everybody.
Introduction
This is a tutorial on how you can create gifs / video previews for your scripts. Having gifs or video previews is nothing absolutely necessary for your scripts. It just adds a little something to the whole presentation and gives the users a good overview over the video. They can just simply see the content of the video and see, if that’s something they like. All that without the need to manually click through the whole video.
I will show you three different tools with which you can create gifs / video previews.
I will show you how to create these kind of gifs, that play themselves:
And I will show you how to create videos, that you have to press to play like this:
https://thumbs2.redgifs.com/PlainDisastrousBats.mp4
How to create gifs with ScriptPlayer
- Get ScriptPlayer
- Install it and open it
- Open a video, of which you want a gif of
- On the top menu click → generate → Preview gif
- This menu will open
You can see the “Height” in pixel. Usually you have to set it lower than 170. That’s because the gif would become to big. You can upload gifs with a max. size of 4 mb. I usually set to 120 or 130 depending on the video. Check the size of the file and reduce the pixel height by 10 until you get it right under 4 mb.
If you check the mark for “Single Section” you are able to just show one single section. Put in the appropriate minute and second mark into the start box and you will get this section as a gif. You can extend the duration of the section under “Duration”. This will increase the size of the gif.
If you check the mark for “Overlay Script position” you will get a gif, that looks like this:
It shows the script pattern down below and can be cool way to show the stroke patterns for your script.
When you are done, click “ok”. The folder, where the gif will be saved, will open by itself.
How to upload this gif
That was pretty easy and fast. Now let’s upload the gif to the forum.
- Create your thread / post
- Click the “upload” button on the top menu or drag and drop the gif into the text box
- It will look like this:
And that’s pretty much if. On the right preview window you can already see the gif playing. But the gif is a bit small, isn’t it? True, but you can change it. On the right you can see the resolution. It says “232x130” (might vary for you). Type in a different resolution to make the gif bigger. I usually go for a 450x250 resolution or 300x200. The higher you set the resolution, the bigger the gif gets, but also the more pixalated it gets. Find a good middle ground.
Pros and cons creating gifs with ScriptPlayer
Fast and easy to use
Gives users a good overview of the whole video
Capability to show script patterns in the gif
You can set single sections you like to show
Gifs don’t have the best quality
No ability to have sound
How to create gifs on redgifs
- Got to redgifs.com
- Make sure youre adblock is on
- Create an account (it’s free)
- When done, go top right corner → create
- Copy the url from the video or drag and drop a video into the box
- This site will open:
You can create a video preview with the maximum length of 60 seconds. Note that you can only select one section. You are not able to have multiple sections like you have with ScriptPlayer.
The “Trim Video” box has the normal player into it. You can see the preview of the 60 seconds video you will get. There is also the option to turn on or off sound.
Down below you see the box “Start time”. This is also the normal player. Select a section you want a video preview of.
The last box named “Length” determines the length of your video preview. You can shorten it if you want to.
When you are done, click “continue”. Now you can determine, if your video should be public and should have sound. (Always make videos privat. I will explain later on why). When you are done, click upload.
Once it’s done it will redirect you to your profile hub, where you can see the finished video.
How to link this video to your thread
There is already a guide for it from @hugecat here.
I will still summarize it here though.
- Open your video on redgifs.
- Make sure to set the quality to hd
- Right click on the video
- “Copy video link” (or something similar in english)
- Paste the link into your thread
- Done
In the preview it will look like this:
It will show the correct video, once the thread is created.
Pros and cons creating video previews on redgifs
Relatively fast and easy
You don’t need external software
You can choose a specific section
Long duration
Abilitiy to have sound
Very high quality
You can only show one section and users won’t get a good overview over the whole video
The site itself isn’t always stable and you may have trouble uploading a video
Video could get taken down and by that, your preview will be gone as well (avoid this, by making every video privat)
Creating a video preview by yourself using a video capture software
If you don’t like any of these options above, you can also create a video preview by yourself with a video capture software. Note, that you still need a redgifs account for it, since you need to upload the video there.
For this, I am using Free Cam. You can download it for free. Just type in a junk mail adress and you are good to go. There are other video capture programms, that you can also use. For this guide, I will use Free Cam.
- Download Free Cam
- Install and open it
- Click on “New Recording”
- This window will open:
(Only the dotted square will open. I always record my previews in OFS, that’s why I show it here.)
Inside the dotted square is your recording area. You can see the sides and corners marked. You have the ability to draw the recording area in any of these directions.
Now press the red dot for recording and you are recording. (On your first recording it will count down from 3. On the follow recordings, it will continue the recording without a countdown).
You can choose any section of the video you want for the recording. You can pause the recording, by pressing the “pause” button (recording button becomes the pause button, once recording started) and go to another section and then continue your recording.
You can also put the simulator in like I do, to show off the strokes.
The recordings should also not be longer than 60 seconds, because you will upload the video to redgifs and it will cut the video to 60 seconds, when over that mark.
Make sure to check the settings, by clicking on the rack-wheel.
Using the hotkey for pause/resuming is very useful. I press both space to play the video and F9 to start the recording simultaneously, to avoid any still standing imagines.
You can also record the audio of the video, by enabling system sounds.
Note, that I get an error, when disabling “Record sytem sounds”. I am not able to save the recording and the program will close and the recording is gone. Just let “Record system sounds” marked. Mute the video, if you don’t want to record the sound of it. If you accidentally record other system sounds, like music or videos in the background, you can mute these sounds later in the edit section of the program.
When you are done with your recording, click “done”.
Now the video preview will open in Free Cam.
You can play the video and check, if you like the preview.
You can make a new recording, if you didn’t like it and want to change it.
You can edit the video and cut out parts you don’t want, or mute the video, if there are sounds you want to get rid of.
You can save the video, when you are done with everything and when it’s ready for upload.
Editing the video
I will shortly go into the edit mode for this software. It’s mostly self explanatory, I will summarize the important stuff though.
Frame preview. You select sections by holding left click. Press “del” to get of a section. With mouse wheel up you can extend the videos to more frames. With mouse wheel down, you reverse this effect.
You can silence the video, if you accidentally recorded any sounds. Just mark a section or the whole (ctrl+a) and press “silence” Any sound will get removed.
When you are done just click “Save and Close”. The menu before will open up again.
I won’t go into the other functions, since I didn’t find any use of them.
Uploading the video to redgifs
- Go to redgifs.com
- ADBLOCK!
- Up right corner → upload
- Drag and drop your video into it
- Wait until it’s uploaded
- Once it’s done it will redirect you to your profile hub, where you can see the finished video.
How to link this video you created to your thread
(The same like in the “How to create gifs on redgifs”. I will still show it here as well.)
There is already a guide for it from @hugecat here.
I will still summarize it here though.
- Open your video on redgifs.
- Make sure to set the quality to hd
100%75%50% - Right click on the video
- “Copy video link” (or something similar in english)
- Paste the link into your thread
- Done
In the preview it’ll look like this:
It will show the correct video, once the thread is created.
Pros and cons creating video previews by yourself with video capture software
You get to choose the sections
You can choose multiple sections
Very high quality
Ability to have sound
The ability to show the simulator in it, to show the strokes
Gives users the best overview, since you can choose the best parts
Most difficult setup out of all options
Takes the most time and effort out of all options
Same downsides, that go for the redgif section above (expect “You can only show one section”)
Summary
Ok, that’s all. I hope some of you find this useful. My favourite option is the “Creating a video preview by yourself using a video capture software”. Mostly because I get to choose multiple sections I want to show off. Also the ability to have the simulator in it is quite handy. People can see the intensity of the action and how I scripted showed sections. Takes time to get used to it and the first time setting it up is a bit finicky, but you get used to it and it goes pretty fast, once you are used to it. Also gives the best quality in my opinion.
If you are new to scripting, I recommend the other two options with a favour to “How to create gifs with ScriptPlayer”.
This is the first time I created a guide like this. If you have any more questions or if I should add something, let me know and I will take care of it.
Thank you very much for reading.
Slibowitz
Useful links
Getting gifs and videos to preview/embed correctly on EroScripts by @hugecat
How to create a video preview for your script with Video Thumbnails Maker by @Lucifie
How to get started with scripting by @sentinel
How to script in OpenFunScripter - video tutorial by @Husky
