Video to GIF

Q: Is my video uploaded?

No. It runs in your browser, so the video never leaves your machine.

Q: Why is my GIF bigger than the video?

GIF stores every frame separately while video stores the differences. It is normal, and shorter helps most.

Q: How do I make the file smaller?

Shorten it first, then lower the frame rate, then reduce the width.

Q: Why does this look better than other converters?

The 256 colours are chosen from your own frames rather than a fixed table, which also makes it smaller.

Q: Will the GIF have sound?

No. GIF has no audio track at all.

Q: Should I use a GIF or a video?

A muted looping MP4 is smaller and better, unless you specifically need something that is an image.

Q: How long can the GIF be?

No hard limit, but past about fifteen seconds the file gets very large. That is the format.

Pick a few seconds and turn them into a GIF. The colours are chosen from your own frames rather than a fixed table, which is why it looks right — and nothing is uploaded.

Runs on your device — the video is never uploaded

Drop a video here

or click to browse your files

MP4 · MOV · MKV · AVI · WebM

GIF has no sound and holds 256 colours, so it suits short, simple clips. Past about fifteen seconds the file gets very large no matter what any tool does.

How it works

Three steps, no account, and the video never leaves your computer.

STEP 01

Drop the video in

It plays right there, so you can find the moment you want by watching rather than by guessing at numbers.

STEP 02

Choose the few seconds you want

Drag the handles, or scrub to a moment and press "Use playhead". Short is better: a GIF stores every frame, so length costs more than anything else.

STEP 03

Set the width and frame rate, then make it

The result appears on the page, animating, with its real size next to it — before you download anything.

What GIFs are still good for

A reaction, a joke, a moment

Two seconds of something, playing on a loop with no controls and no sound. This is the thing GIF is genuinely still best at.

Showing how software works

A short screen recording in a bug report, a README or a chat message plays immediately, where a video file makes people click.

Somewhere video will not play

Email clients, old forums and some documentation systems accept an image and nothing else. A GIF is an image.

A looping detail

A mechanism turning, a chart building, a step repeating — anything worth watching more than once without a play button.

Why most GIF converters produce something muddy

A GIF holds 256 colours. Not 256 shades of each colour — 256 in total, for the whole animation. A single frame of ordinary video contains tens of thousands.

So every conversion has to answer a question: which 256?

The two ways to choose

The quick answer is to use a fixed, general-purpose set of 256 colours and map each pixel to the nearest one. It takes one pass and it is what most converters do. It is also why so many GIFs look banded and slightly wrong — a sunset gets four browns, skin turns blotchy, and a brand colour comes out approximately.

The better answer is to look at the frames first, work out which 256 colours those particular frames actually need, and then encode against that. It costs a second pass. What it buys is a GIF whose palette is made of the colours in your video rather than somebody's idea of a reasonable spread.

It also, slightly counter-intuitively, produces a smaller file. On the clip this was measured with, one pass gave 228 KB and two passes gave 181 KB — twenty per cent less, and better looking. Similar colours end up adjacent in a purpose-built palette, which is exactly what the compression inside a GIF is good at.

That is the only method offered here, because there is no case for the other one.

Length is what makes a GIF enormous

Video stores a complete frame occasionally and describes everything in between as differences. GIF barely does this: each frame is stored close to independently. That single fact explains almost everything about GIF file sizes.

It means length costs you far more than resolution does. Three settings control the result, and they are not equally powerful:

Setting	Effect on size	Effect on how it looks
Length	Directly proportional — twice as long is twice as big	None
Frames a second	Directly proportional	Below about 10 the motion starts to stutter
Width	Roughly squared — half the width is about a quarter the size	Obvious, but 480 is plenty for a loop

If a GIF is too big, cut a second off it before you touch anything else. It is the change nobody notices and it is the most effective one.

When your GIF is bigger than the video was

This happens constantly and it alarms people. A 900 KB video becoming a 3 MB GIF is not a mistake — it is GIF storing every frame nearly whole while the video stored the differences. The video format is simply much better at being a video.

So it is worth saying plainly: if the file has to be small, a GIF is the wrong format. A muted, looping MP4 is a fraction of the size at better quality, and every social platform, chat app and browser handles one now — several convert your GIF into exactly that after you upload it. GIF is worth choosing when you need something that is unambiguously an image: an email, an old forum, a documentation system that will not embed video.

Frame rate, and the number that matters

Video is usually 24, 30 or 60 frames a second. A GIF at 30 is three times the file of a GIF at 10 and, for most looping clips, no better to watch.

Twelve is a good default. Eight still reads as motion for slow subjects and is noticeably lighter. Above fifteen you are paying a lot for something few people will consciously notice, unless the clip contains fast movement or a mouse cursor people need to follow.

There is no sound, and no watermark

GIF has no audio track at all. Nothing is lost in this conversion because there is nowhere for it to go — if the sound matters, the clip should stay a video.

And there is no watermark and no length cap, because your video is never uploaded. Both of those exist elsewhere to recover the cost of a server, and there is no server here: the conversion runs in your browser, on your own processor.

Common questions

Is my video uploaded?

No. Everything happens in your browser using your own processor, so the file never leaves your machine. That is why there is no size limit, no queue and no account.

Why is my GIF bigger than the video?

Because GIF stores every frame almost independently, while video stores only the differences between frames. It is normal for a GIF to be several times the size of the clip it came from. Fewer frames a second, a smaller width, or a shorter selection all help.

How do I make the file smaller?

Cut a second off it first — length costs more than anything else and nobody notices. Then drop the frame rate to 8 or 10. Width is last: halving it quarters the size but it is the change people actually see.

Why does this look better than other converters?

Because the 256 colours a GIF can hold are chosen from your own frames rather than from a fixed general-purpose table. It takes a second pass and produces a file that is both better looking and about twenty per cent smaller.

Will the GIF have sound?

No. The GIF format has no audio track at all, so no converter can give you one. If the sound matters, keep the clip as a video.

Should I use a GIF or a video?

A video, unless you specifically need an image. A muted looping MP4 is far smaller at better quality and every platform supports one. GIF is right for email, older forums, and anywhere that will accept an image but not a video.

How long can the GIF be?

There is no hard limit here, but past about fifteen seconds the file gets very large whatever any tool does — that is the format, not the converter. For anything longer, a video is the right answer.

More tools

Every one of them runs on your device. No uploads, no accounts.