A cinemagraph is generated that includes one or more video loops. A cinemagraph generator receives an input video, and semantically segments the frames to identify regions that correspond to semantic objects and the semantic object depicted in each identified region. Input time intervals are then computed for the pixels of the frames of the input video. An input time interval for a particular pixel includes a per-pixel loop period and a per-pixel start time of a loop at the particular pixel. In addition, the input time interval of a pixel is based, in part, on one or more semantic terms which keep pixels associated with the same semantic object in the same video loop. A cinemagraph is then created using the input time intervals computed for the pixels of the frames of the input video.