Video to GIF
Turn a few seconds of video into an animated GIF.
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or drag it here
MP4, MOV, WebM, or MKV
- Takes
- MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, and MKV. AVI, WMV, and FLV cannot be read in a browser and are refused.
- Size
- The video can be any length — only the part you pick is used, up to 30 seconds. Longer GIFs get far too big to send anyway.
Your files stay on your device
How to use it
Drop a video, pick the part you want, and choose a width, frame rate, and colours to make a GIF. The size updates as you go.
Drop a video onto the box above and set the start and end of the bit you want (up to 30 seconds). Then choose a width, how smooth it is (frames per second), and how many colours to use.
GIFs get big fast. To make yours smaller: make it narrower first (that saves the most), then lower the frames per second (10 is smooth enough for most clips), then use fewer colours. The estimated size updates as you go.
Seeing stripes in skies or gradients? Turn on dithering. Leave it off for screen recordings — it makes files bigger.
When is a GIF the right choice? When a video won’t play — in an email, an old forum, or a README. Anywhere else, the video you already have is smaller and looks better.
FAQ
Why is my GIF so big?
GIFs store every frame as a picture. Make it narrower, lower the frames per second, or use fewer colours.
How long can a GIF be?
Up to 30 seconds. Longer ones get too big to send anyway.
Does the GIF have sound?
No. GIFs can’t have sound.
Should I turn on dithering?
For videos with skies or soft gradients, yes. For screen recordings and cartoons, no.
What frame rate should I use?
10 is smooth enough for most clips. Use 15–20 for fast action.
Which video formats work?
MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, and MKV.
How it worksFor the curious
The chosen section is decoded frame by frame, scaled, and sampled at the requested rate — seeking to the needed moments rather than decoding everything — then quantised to one palette and written as GIF89a. A GIF’s size is roughly width × height × frames, and GIF has no quality knob because it stores pixels losslessly.
Only the changed region of each frame is stored, with unchanged pixels transparent so the previous frame shows through, and identical consecutive frames are merged into one longer frame. On screen recordings this is most of the saving, so the estimate is an upper bound.
One palette is chosen across every frame, because per-frame palettes shimmer. Dithering scatters colour error as fine grain, which differs every frame and defeats the changed-region saving, sometimes doubling the file. Frames are held in memory as raw pixels while the palette is chosen, hence the 30-second cap.