If I just want a few frames animated, I would do it in Photoshop which also lets you place text or arrows to illustrate it. I tried Preview to delete a few frames, but when it saved the GIF, it recompressed it and it looked terrible. I usually at least have a bit needing trimmed off the beginning and end of the video even it I do it in one take. It captures direct to GIF though, which I don’t have any way of editing easily but I could look into that. I’ve just tried LiceCap and it’s really nice for capturing the mouse cursor better than Quicktime player. Actually, GIPHY Capture is also a search engine for GIF collections. You can apply special effects to the animated GIF too. Moreover, GIPHY Capture allows users to trim the recording into clips. GifCam is a desktop application that enables beginners to create their own GIFs. You can record screen into GIF animations with clicks. This also has the advantage that it is not captured in GIF, so could be edited in any video editing software that you might if you just can’t get the video size down small enough, put it on youtube (unlisted if you want) and post the link on the forum. GIPHY Capture is a screen capture GIF maker for Mac. Up until now, I’ve been using Quicktime Player to capture the video and trim bits off the start and end, then ffmpeg and convert (ImageMagick) to convert the Quicktime movie to a GIF, which has lots of settings if you want to tweak it.

Gifcam for mac