Video to GIF

How to make a GIF from a video

1. Drop a video on the box above, or click it to choose a file (up to 300 MB).
2. The first 5 seconds are selected. Move to the moment you want and press Set start here, then Set end here, or type the times as seconds (12.5) or minutes:seconds (0:12.5). Play selection replays the chosen part.
3. Choose the Frames per second and the Width. The line next to the button shows the length, the number of frames, the size in pixels and a rough estimate of the file size.
4. Press Make GIF. A progress bar appears with a Cancel button.
5. The animated GIF is shown as a preview. If you like it, download it; if it is too heavy, change the settings and make it again.

How the conversion works

A GIF can only hold 256 colours per frame, while a video frame has millions. The quality of a GIF depends mostly on which 256 colours are chosen. This tool uses FFmpeg’s two-pass method, the one recommended for good-looking GIFs:

1. Palette pass. FFmpeg reads the selected part once and builds a palette of the 256 colours that best represent this particular clip (palettegen), giving extra weight to the parts that move.
2. Encoding pass. It reads the clip again and maps every frame to that palette (paletteuse), with light error-diffusion dithering to smooth gradients. Only the areas that change between frames are re-dithered, which avoids flickering noise and keeps the file smaller.

The frames are also resampled to the chosen frame rate and resized with the Lanczos filter, which keeps text and edges sharp. The result loops forever, like most GIFs on the web.

Everything runs in your browser with FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly. The first time, about 30 MB are downloaded and kept in your browser’s cache. Your video is never uploaded.

Keeping the GIF small

GIF is an old and inefficient format: a GIF is often 5 to 10 times heavier than the same clip as MP4. Its size grows with width × height × number of frames, so:

• Shorten the clip. 2 to 6 seconds is typical for a reaction or a demo.
• Lower the frames per second. 10 fps looks smooth enough for most content and weighs half as much as 20 fps. Screen recordings often look fine at 5–8 fps.
• Reduce the width. Going from 640 px to 480 px divides the pixel count by almost two. 480 px is a good default for chat and social networks.

The size estimate assumes about 0.3 bytes per pixel per frame. Real clips vary a lot: flat screen recordings compress much better, grainy camera footage much worse. When the estimate goes above 15 MB or the clip exceeds 450 frames, the tool shows a warning. Beyond 1,500 frames it refuses, because the conversion would take too long and use too much memory in a browser.

Limits

A browser is slower than desktop software: each pass decodes the video on a single processor core. Short clips at moderate widths convert in seconds; long clips at full HD can take minutes. For a long excerpt, cut it first with the video trimmer, then convert only that part. Files your browser can’t play (AVI, some MKV) can still be converted, but without a preview: type the start and end times.