[my_ghola]

Part of the popularity of GIFs is that editing them is easier. You can edit them in photoshop or gimp or other image editors, which allow you to use skills learned for editing images (like putting those large black and white texts on top of an image) with it.

Video require more technical skill and different software people would have to learn (and time in case you need to edit it frame by frame).

What I find nonsensical is that imgur only lets you upload gif which it then converts to video instead of allowing you to upload video directly.

[greggman]

FYI you can edit videos in Photoshop and paint on every individual frame. I used they feature back in 2005? (might be bad memory). In any case just opened an mp4 in Photoshop to make sure I wasn't crazy.

[cflat]

cool. painful, but cool.

[digi_owl]

Most gifs these days is via custom tools that will basically rip the frames and assemble the gif. Just give it a start and stop time, a video file, and grab a latte...

[setzer22]

In case I don't have a source video file, one of my personal favourites is peek [1]. A small gtk app that allows you to quickly record a portion of your screen and save as a GIF.

[1]: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=209422

[nasredin]

They are not really "custom".

Maximum quality is usually via

Video editor:

VirtualDub

MKVToolNix

(cut a scene and convert to uncompressed video)

GIF editor (they are still around):

Jasc Animation Shop

Ulead Gif Animator

(open uncompressed video and convert to GIF)

And there are a ton of noob-friendly tools that combine the two.