#but there are also 23 4K rips that I do not compress

[forgotn1]

My NAS that I use as a media server now has less than a terabyte of space left out of 4TB. I still have a couple hundred movies to put on it so I think it's finally time to get more drives. I think I'm gonna see about getting a couple 6TB drives this time.

[kylos]

Finding high quality film/tv rips, saving the large files, and screencapping them are half the battle for gifmakers when setting out to make a gifset. Here’s a little guide on this process, including my advice on

Where to download stuff

Where to store your movies/shows

Screencapping programs

Making gifs as HQ as possible, including tips for picking out what to download when you have multiple options (not all 1080p rips of the same movie or tv episode are the same quality and I explain why)

Why screencaps of 4k movies can look weird and washed out and how to fix that

and more

✨ You can find my gifmaking 101 tutorial here and the rest of my tutorials here.

Where can I download movies and shows?

First off, I prefer direct downloading rather than torrenting stuff because it’s faster and with torrenting, there’s more of a risk. Other people downloading the same torrent can see your IP address. This means movie studios can find out you’re downloading their content and can send you a warning letter. The download speed also varies depending on how many other people are seeding it. I would only do it if it’s your only option and you have a VPN or something.

This is THE best guide for pirating I’ve ever seen. I use it for finding sites for books, music, you name it. The part of the guide you’d want to look at is where it says Direct Downloads Link (DDL) sites. My favorite place is Snahp. These ddl sites will have links to their movie/tv rips that are typically hosted on one of these two sites: google drive or mega.nz. You can download stuff from both of those sites for free, but with mega, they have a 5GB file download limit unless you have a premium account. I personally pay the $5 a month membership for mega because it’s worth it imo. You can buy a subscription through the mega app found on the iphone app store (so you’re billed through apple and it’s less scary than giving a random site your credit card info lmao) and as for androids I think mega has an app on there too.

So basically, if you go to http://snahp.it, they’ll have rips for different movies and shows.

You click on the movie title and it’ll take you to a page where they have links for the video which they have uploaded on a variety of sites (including mega).

How do I make my gifs as HQ as possible?

It’s best to gif things that are 1080p. And usually the higher the file size, the better. A really important thing to note is that not all 1080p bluray rips are the same. The piracy groups that rip these files take uncompressed .mkv rips from discs that are anywhere from 10gb to like 50gb, and then run that through video converters to compress the file down so that they’re 2-8gb. Sometimes when that happens, the video quality goes down a LOT. The same goes for TV episodes. One rip could be 800mb, the other could be 3gb and both could claim to be “1080p” but the quality would be NOTICEABLY different. Your best bet is to always pick the rip with the highest file size.

I’ll show you an example with this scene from You’ve Got Mail.

I downloaded 2 different 1080p rip versions of the film. Both claim to be 1080p, but one is 2.41 GB and the other is 9.75 GB. After taking screencaps, it’s obvious that there’s a BIG difference in quality.

(these pictures are best viewed on desktop tumblr)

When it comes to Blu-ray rips, download remux versions of films and shows if possible. Remux means .mkv files that are uncompressed and straight from a Blu-Ray disc. Giffing remux rips cuts down on the possibility of seeing pixel-y effects a LOT in my experience. It’ll take a bit longer to download than typical 1080p rips but it’s worth it imo.

For TV episodes, if you can’t find a Blu-Ray rip, uploads with the word AMZN in it are usually the highest quality and your best bet (unless you see another upload that’s higher in file size - again: always try to pick the highest file size). 'AMZN’ means they’re from a person that ripped the episode from Amazon Prime Video.

Also, even better than 1080p is 4k (2160p). I only really recommend this though if you know you’re going to gif something up close and crop it a lot - like if it’s a big 540x540px close-up gif of a person. You’ll REALLY see the difference if it’s a 1080p vs 4k rip in that situation. I usually don’t bother with giffing 4k files unless it’s the case above because my laptop lags when taking 4k screencaps and it takes longer to load them into photoshop (4k screencaps are usually about 60mb each!)

⭐️ Another thing that’s important is making sure that when you actually make your gifs, you set them to the correct speed (.05 for movies and most shows, and .04 sometimes for reality tv and live broadcasts). Here’s my gif speed guide. Having the right gif speed is really important for making a gifset HQ. You don’t want it to look too slow or too fast.

What’s your favorite video player to take screenshots with?

MPV player, hands down. And I’ve tried a TON of programs over the years. I’ve tried KMPlayer and found that it added duplicate frames (and even missing frames) which is horrible, and I’ve tried GomPlayer which is.....I’m just gonna say it, I’m not the biggest fan of it. It’s a little overly complicated in my opinion and it has ads. If you like these programs, more power to you! Use whatever you’re comfortable using. I just like MPV the most because it doesn’t have ads, it’s simple, you can take sequential screencaps with a keyboard shortcut, and it can play 4k movies.

Screencaps I take of 4k 2160p movies look so dull and washed out, like the colors aren’t right. Why is that?

That’s because your computer can’t handle HDR 4k video files. It probably can handle SDR 4k video files, but unfortunately, 99% of 4k rips out there are HDR.

[picture source]

Now, HDR displays just fine on computers that have 4k-HDR capabilities, but most older computers don’t have this ability. Having said that, MPV - the video player I mentioned above can take a 4K-HDR video and fix the colors/lighting in real time so it displays correctly AND take screenshots of it with the fixed colors. If you have an older version of MPV, make sure you download the newest update for this. In my general gifmaking tutorial, there’s a portion on how to install this program on macs. I also just made a video tutorial on how to install it on pcs here!

High quality TV and Movie rips can take up a LOT of space on my computer. Where do you store your files?

I store them on external hard drives. External hard drives are like flash drives but they have a MUCH higher storage capacity. You just plug them into your computer via a usb cord when you need access to the files and it’s that easy. I have two of these Seagate 4TB hard drives in different colors so I can easily pick out whichever one I need. I have silver for my movies (because it makes me think of “silver screen” lmao and it’s easier for me to remember) and then I just have a blue for shows. Now, external hard drives of this size can be $$$$ but it’s worth it imo. Look out for when they’re on sale.

What’s the size limit for gifs now?

It’s 10mb! It used to be 3mb and then last year Tumblr upped it to 5mb. Some gifs initially had distortion because of Tumblr’s switch from the .gif to .gifv format, but they’ve fixed the problem AND increased the upload limit to 10mb.  Just make sure not to add any lossy to a gif.

Lossy is basically a grain you can add to a gif to lower the file size down. Gifmakers (including myself) used to use this as a trick to get the file size down under 3mb. However, since the .gifv update on Tumblr, any gifs with Lossy added will look distorted like it’s a gif made on a phone app or something.

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That’s it for this guide! Again, feel free to check out my other tutorials on photoshop, how to center subtitles, download hq movie trailers, and more ✌️

UPDATE 6/23/20 ⚠️

I’ve gotten an ask about this problem 3 times since I’ve uploaded this tutorial, so I thought I’d add this in. If you are experiencing duplicate and/or missing frames in mpv, it is a glitch with the latest version of mpv. download an older version like 0.29.0. this happened to me on my mac and downloading an older version fixed the problem.