1. A method comprising steps of: receiving, at a computing device, a request from a user for creation of an animated Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) file from a video file; determining, via the computing device, a segment within the video file, said segment determination comprising parsing the video file to identify transition frames within the video file, said segment comprising video frames of the video file existing between a pair of identified transition frames; determining, via the computing device, playback settings for the segment, each playback setting comprising a different frame sampling rate and time interval between each frame of the segment; determining, via the computing device, an n-dimensional feature vector for the segment, said feature vector determination comprising parsing the segment to identify information associated with motion, emotion and interestingness features of the segment, said feature vector based on the motion, emotion and interestingness information; determining, via the computing device, a popularity score for each playback setting based on the feature vector, said popularity score determination comprising determining an optimal playback setting for the segment from the playback settings; and automatically creating, via the computing device, the animated GIF file, said animated GIF file comprising said segment renderable at said optimal playback setting.