So I ended up just doing this by code having found this script (http://www.alberton.info/video_preview_as_animated_gif_with_ffmpeg_and_spl.html#.UxnU_IXYNyI) which made it easy where you can simply specify the position in the video by percentage on the frame to extract along with the interval between frames I can accomplish my problem above using the following.
// where ffmpeg is located, such as /usr/sbin/ffmpeg
$ffmpeg = '/usr/bin/ffmpeg';
// the input video file
$video = 'sample.avi';
// extract one frame at 10% of the length, one at 20% and so on
$frames = array('10%', '20%', '30%', '40%', '50%', '60%', '70%', '80%', '90%', '100%');
// set the delay between frames in the output GIF in ms (60 = 1 min)
$joiner = new Thumbnail_Joiner(60);
// loop through the extracted frames and add them to the joiner object specifying
// the max width/height to make the thumb based on the dimensions of the video
foreach (new Thumbnail_Extractor($video, $frames, '150x150', $ffmpeg) as $key => $frame) {
$joiner->add($frame);
}
$joiner->save('sample.gif');
The above will go 10% into the length of the video, grab the frame for the first image of the animated GIF, create a 60ms/1sec delay, go 20% into the length of the video and repeat the process for each percentage specified which results in a video of any length having an animated GIF that's 10 seconds long containing 10 frames within the video at 10% intervals in length that show for 1 second each.