Sony has updated its ShareFactory PS4 application to allow users to turn gaming clips captured on the system into animated GIFs. The editing software is easy to use, though the GIFs are fairly low-res. Theyāre tailored for Tweeting. Hereās how it works.
If you have a PS4, download the Share Factory app and make sure it is patched to the latest versionā¦
Open it up and select the option to make a GIFā¦
You can make GIFs from videos youāve already captured on the system via the PS4ās share button. You can also make them from videos edited already edited in the Share Factory app. In this example, Iām making a GIF from a capture I did of the game Abzu
Once you pick the video youāll be pulling from, you have to pick a starting point. You can scrub back and forth using several control inputsā¦
Then you press X to āprepare GIFā and Share Factory will grab a nine second loop starting at your starting pointā¦
You can use that nine-second loop as your GIF, but the app lets you trim on both ends. As you do, the loop continues to replay, so you can see in real-time how moving the end-points changes the loopā¦
Thereās no obvious option to save the GIF. Instead, you can choose to āshareā it. Thatāll bring up an option to Tweet it, though you can choose not to and it will in fact be saved to your system.
Youāll find your saved GIFs in your Capture Gallery app, though be aware that theyāre not contained in the folder for the game featured in the GIF. In this case, I was making a GIF from capture of the game Abzu. The GIF wasnāt in my Abzu folder. It was in the Share Factory folder.
By clicking the Options button, you can choose to export the GIF to a USB drive if you want to use that file to, say, feature it in a Kotaku explainer post:
As you can see, the GIF is small, just 400 pixels wide and tailored to be Tweeted. This short one is just 2MB.
If there are settings to make higher-res GIFs or ones that are longer than nine seconds, I havenāt found them. Maybe thatāll come later. This is a start.
