It’s only available on the PBS Idea Channel, and you’re limited to five-second animated nuggets, but YouTube is flirting heavily with the GIF. Hidden in the “Share” tools for that PBS channel, there’s a “GIF” tab that lets you set in- and out-points for a video. You can also type upper- and lower-third text that appears as an overlay (in Impact font, of course).

The end result is an animated GIF hosted on YouTube’s servers, available as both a standalone YouTube link or as an iframe embed. Like all GIFs, they don't appear as in-line animations on Twitter, but here’s what they look like as an embed. Clicking the GIF will bring you to the full video on YouTube.

YouTube wouldn't comment on plans for a wider permanent rollout—or even additional testing channels—but the feature was teased in a “YouTube Creator Preview” video posted in late November. In it, at the 1:13 mark, YouTube software engineer Michael Chang talks about the experimental GIF-creator rollout. (Ironically, that video isn’t part of the GIF-creator test run, so here’s the full clip.)

The tool is one of many in YouTube’s offerings for “Creators”—higher-profile personalities on the video service that have a minimum number of subscribers. While the create-a-GIF tool is much more likely to find its way into the service’s sharing options for everybody, there are full production facilities in L.A. and New York that can be used by YouTubers with more than 10,000 subscribers and monetization features enabled on their account. YouTube also has an online “Creator Hub” with online tutorials, analytics tools, and audio clips.

YouTube would not provide specific information about subscriber counts or other limitations for joining the GIF beta program, but there’s a sign-up form available here.