Instant Animated Thumbnails with ShareX

[Falafel]

This tutorial is about quickly producing GIFs that are just 200*140, which is the dimension that is guaranteed to stay animated as topic thumbnail.

We are going to use ShareX.

1. In its main window, click “Hotkey settings…”.
   

   

2. We are going to add a hotkey that’s unique to this workflow.
   

   

3. Select the newly created hotkey, click “Edit…” or the icon next to it.
   

   

4. Under “Capture”, check “Override capture settings”.
   

   

5. Go to “Screen recorder”, “Screen recording options…”.
   

   

6. Under “additional command line arguments”, add:

-vf "scale=-1:140,crop=200:140"

This will resize the GIF targeting a height of 140px, then crop the width down to 200.

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Now execute the hotkey and grab an area of your monitor, hit “start” to start recording.

The output GIF should be automatically scaled down & cropped to 200*140. As long as it’s not too large it should stay animated as topic thumbnail.

Note that when grabbing your screen you want the selection box to be close to a 10:7 aspect ratio. Otherwise you may get an error because there’s not enough pixels to be cropped.

Configure ShareX to your own liking and get comfortable with it as your productivity tool. Next time you want to make a Thumbnail for EroScripts posts just use the hotkey.

[shbek]

200 x 140! So that was the secret formula

[Midevil]

Ohhhhhhhhh no wonder it doesnt animate!

[Falafel]

I’m working for a solution to record + AV1 encode a preview video in ShareX, so I don’t have to record then manually encode it with ffmpeg.

I’m currently stuck, though.

Encode After Record with ShareX Actions

I was thinking if there is a way to record with ShareX, then let it automatically encode the video in AV1 targeting a certain bitrate. This way one can record a preview video in 1 step without having to manually encode it. ShareX had an “action” feature which allows execution of CLI commands right after capture: Actions - ShareX The webpage suggests -i "$input" -c:v libsvtav1 -crf 35 -c:a libopus -b:a 128k -y "$output" which works well, but only if the output extension is .mkv. This site d…

If I can’t figure out a way I may settle with VP9. It’s very easy to deal with that in ShareX.

[roa]

Is that so? Captura can not record that small.
Nevermind will just use Sharex for those. Thanks for the tutorial Fal.

[exMachina]

Thanks! I was literally trying to make gifs earlier for a post and it was a pain

[roa]

Where is thumbnail gif? Or is that your own rename for which one?

Yes it’ rename is it start/stop recording gif?

[Dimava]

Btw try webm renamed to webp
There’s a high chance it’ll render

Gifs are

[Falafel]

It’s my own rename. You should choose

[Falafel]

can’t upload it

but yes the site should support webp images

[roa]

Ya got it trying to capture an area to that 200x140 gif but gives me render error.
Works now dunno why Now would be nice if it could start OFS playback when capture starts

[roa]

So you mark region and recording starts with playback of OFS. Dont think it can do that can it?

[Dimava]

Okay that was a good try
ffmpeg actually does support webp
use it if needed

[roa]

Most logic way would be to start capturing an area when movie is started aka the image in the marked area changes. Meaning you mark the area and press play in OFS. Never saw an app that can do this.

[ptitcerf]

Thanks for this tutorial.
Give me the idea to do gif thumbnails for the ES Script Indexes, but remember thumbs are still not displayed on the Script Collections. Maybe not worth to spend time on these

[roa]

@ptitcerf

thumbs are still not displayed on the Script Collections

Post it to Cpt Vlad as feature request after he moves the mothership. Would second it.

[roa]

It has an “Auto Capture” feature where you can set it to continuously monitor a region of your screen and only capture when that region changes (similar to a screen recorder but more selective).

Now that is intredasting where is that in Sharex windows like configuration hell?

[ptitcerf]

Already asked many times on multiples topics or in chat, last time in a dedicated topic in suggestions. But no answer.

Suggestion: enable thumbs for Script Collections

Hello, Something I really want to see are thumbnails on the Script Collections list. This is enabled for Scripts and Scripts Request, but maybe this can be too for the Collections. okay, maybe because I’ve done great thumbs for my ES indexes topics, but I think this can interest and grab some visitors on the topics if thumbs are enabled. What do you think? Is technically possible? Or it was already asked but not enabled for a reason? Thanks for at least the discussion

[roa]

There it is capture/Auto capture. Idea is to start the OFS player and it records a 2 sec gif. Lets see if that works.

No doesnt work its just a repetitive capture, not a window change recognition.