Help smoothing out a .gif

[WRoss]

Yesterday, I went to a local nature center and made a few cinemagraphs with my phone. They are cool on my phone, but I can only load them onto my computer via MP4. I'm struggling to make smooth gifs out of them. For example, I've been playing around with this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BsrUOICwtQ


All the gifs I make end up jumping around, like so:
http://i.imgur.com/p7TPXb8.gif

Any help with fixing this without having to buy a program would be appreciated.

[Latrinsorm]

Unless you want to alter the images, there's only so much you can do. I have spent a lot of time making gifs with amateur tools, and here's how I have gotten my best results:

1. A naturally occurring loop: where the last image is very near the first. This is more luck of the draw than anything else, if it's not in the video you're out of luck. There are applications to do this for you, but I've never tried any so can't give you any pointers. Looking at frames is how I do it.

2. Forward and back: where you take two non-similar images as your endpoints, but play the non-endpoint images forward then backwards. How well this works depends on the motion. It probably won't work for flowing water or anything gravitational, but something blowing in the breeze could work. You will also probably want to double up on images near the endpoint to avoid unrealistically severe change in direction.

3. Extremely dissimilar endpoints: in my experience it's an uncanny valley type situation. If you are very near to a loop or very far away, you're okay. It's the middle ground of almost-but-not-quite that produces awkwardness.

4. Fade in and out: if your endpoints are solid black they necessarily match, then you fade in through a few. It only really works for quite long GIFs (3+ seconds), and even then I've found it to be a little clumsy.

So if we look at the specific GIF in your OP, it's a lost cause. It doesn't meet 1 or 3, it's bad for 2, it's not long enough for 4. In general you want as little motion as possible in your GIF, which sounds contradictory but hear me out: there are about six areas of motion in your field of view, trying to match up every one of them AND keep the camera steady is impossible. If you had just one stream or waterfall or area of turbulence it would be a lot easier.

Good luck!

[WRoss]

I missed your response. Thanks for being so in-depth as to why I suck at photography.

I'll be crying over my falafel now.

[Latrinsorm]

Happy to help! Your tears are so delicious...