Create GIF From iPhone Burst Mode

I recently wanted to create a GIF from some burst images and already had FFmpeg installed on my Mac. Surely the audacious tool can create a GIF from the images. Turns out, it can!

This was done using FFmpeg 3.1.2, although any 3.x version should work.

First, get all your burst images onto your Mac into a folder. I used Image Capture, found the images, and imported them all to a new folder.

Now, when imported straight from the iPhone, the names will be something like: IMG_3244.JPG. It's important that these are in the correct order you want your GIF to be in. It's also important that there are no breaks in the sequence. If there are, you need to rename the images so that the numbers don't have any gaps in them. (So if you have IMG_3244.JPG, IMG_3245.JPG, and IMG_3247.JPG, rename the last one to IMG_3246.JPG).

Once your images are in the correct order, fire up your terminal and cd to the directory.

ffmpeg -f image2 -framerate 9 -start_number 3244 -i IMG_%4d.JPG -vf scale=531x299,transpose=1,crop=299:431:0:100 out.gif

There are two things you may need to change:

1. The IMG_%4d.JPG maps to your image names, where the 4 is how many digits there are. If your images are named IMG_534.JPG, you'd want %3d.
2. The -start_number 3244 maps to the first image number you have, so you'll want to change that.

There you go! You now have a GIF named out.gif that you can share with your friends.