How to Create Animated GIFs

GIFs are small, low quality videos that autoplay in a loop and are perfect for sharing online – with friends on social media, in email campaigns, and more! As most GIFs are only a few seconds long, they can usually be produced quickly. GIF creation follows the same process as any other video creation in Pinnacle Studio, right up to the exporting stage.

Exporting Video as an Animated GIF

Once your video is ready for export, click on the Export tab to open the Export Settings.

Select Extension from the dropdown menu below the Same as Timeline checkbox, then select GIF from the dropdown menu that appears to the right.

You can now choose from the preset options for file size in the Preset dropdown, or select Custom to fine tune your GIF export with precision by exploring additional resolution options, enabling/disabling automatic loop play, or even adjusting the desired frames per second.

Note: Generally, GIFs are intended to be as small of a file size as possible to ensure it is easy to share, and quick to load on both phones and computers. Usually, preserving image quality is not as important with the emotion or reaction GIFs are intended to convey, so you’ll likely select from a smaller preset option. However, if your use case requires you to preserve detail and clarity, you can maintain the GIF at its original size with the GIF Original preset.

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