Bash Scripting to Convert Mp4 Files into GIF

With a simple script we can quicly convert a folder of MP4 files into GIF file using Bash file and FFMPEG.

First we will need to get a list of all MP4 files under the *.mp4 directory

mp4_dir="./mp4"
file_names=`ls $mp4_dir`

We will then loop over each file and echo only the file name without the extension

for name in $file_names
do
	echo ${name%.mp4}
done	

Finally we can run the ffmpeg command directly inside our Bash script

ffmpeg 
    -ss 0 
    -t 6 
    -i "./mp4/${name%.mp4}.mp4" 
    -vf "fps=10,scale=640:-1:flags=lanczos,split[s0][s1];[s0]palettegen[p];[s1][p]paletteuse" 
    -loop 0 
    "./gif/${name%.mp4}.gif"

The FFMPEG options let us specify:

• START SECOND with -ss param
• TIME DURATION with -t param
• INPUT FILE with -i
• VIDEO FORMAT -vf
• LOOP INPUT MP4 or NOT with -loop.

And the output GIF file name. ${name%.mp4} will take the mp4 file name and assign it to the gif file.