Coub: Move over GIF there's a new guy in town and he's much better looking

Even on the coldest and darkest of days a good GIF can cheer you right up, whether it’s a quote from Mean Girls, a jumping cat or Boris Johnson flailing around on a zip wire. In fact, if they don’t put just a little smile on your face then you’re clearly dead inside. Or not a huge internet geek. Either way there’s something very wrong with you.

Well today at Shiny Shiny we came across a brand new way to create moving images that’s just so simple I managed to do it with a really bad cold and a poorly eye. It’s called Coub and it promises to be “a revolutionary way to turn videos into high quality moving images with sound”, so obviously we put it to the test with lots of stupid clips from Arrested Development and Obama speeches.

To get started you sign up for an account, which takes a few seconds, then upload a video clip of your own or find one on YouTube. You can then move the slider along to get the section you want to create a Coub out of, which works in the same way as iMovie or another simple video editing programme. Then just hit done and you’re… DONE. That’s it. You’ve got a Coub that repeats in an endless loop once you’ve clicked on it and you can embed it, share it or just stare it at for as long as you like.

Although they may look like GIFs, Coubs are more just like short video clips that are set to repeat, so the quality and colours are better and most importantly you can add sounds too.

We can see that Coubs will be a big hit among GIF lovers, but they’ll also be a valuable tool for portfolios and more serious things. But before that BRING ON THE CATS.

The Coub site is still really new, so expect a few slow loading pages and lots of fancy features in the near future, like an app so you can create moving Coubs on the go. Oh dear lord we’ll never get ANYTHING done. EVER.

FYI just don’t take a look at what Coub means over at Urban Dictionary, it’s definitely not as pleasant (but probably not as bad as you’re expecting, you dirty minded readers)…

Becca Caddy