GIF creation

Today I spent two hours creating nine GIFs for two writers who intend to use the GIFs for analysis in a couple of future posts. The process I use to make GIFs is to record the video, trim the video, import it into photoshop, edit, crop and watermark the GIFs. Then I upload it to the site. I use a program called Fraps (http://www.fraps.com/) to record video from MLB.TV which has archived games from last season and beyond. I use Windows Movie Maker to trim the video. It’s simple, quick, and easy to use. Plus I’m only trimming the video. There have been a couple times that I’ve used Adobe Premiere to edit some video, but that’s for special cases where I’m trying to do a little more with the GIF that I can’t do in Photoshop. Once the video is trimmed I import it into Photoshop where I delete unnecessary frames, crop and add a watermark to the GIF. If I can fit two different shots into one GIF I will do that from time to time, like one of the GIFs I created tonight.

The GIF is then exported and uploaded to our site and placed in the editor at the writers discretion.

Graphic creation

One of the promotional things we’re doing leading up to the start of Spring Training is creating an SB Nation meme counting down the days. We grab pictures from the photo database upload them to the tool and then fill out the text. Here is what’s scheduled for tomorrow.

As you can see we’re on day 37, so there are a lot more memes that need to be created and promoted on Facebook and Twitter. I will be doing this over the next few days and scheduling out the posts on our social media platforms.