Video to GIF is the conversion you reach for when you need to embed a short clip in a place that does not support video — a Slack message, an email signature, an old-school forum, a documentation site that does not autoplay video, or a tweet thread where you want the clip to loop without sound. The tool extracts a range of frames from your video and packages them into an animated GIF, with controls for the trade-offs that matter most: file size, frame rate, dimensions, and colour fidelity.
GIF as a format is fundamentally inefficient compared to modern video codecs — a 5-second clip at 1080p that is 200 KB as MP4 can easily be 5–10 MB as GIF. The tool defaults to settings that keep file sizes manageable: a target width of 480 pixels, 15 frames per second, and a colour palette of 128 colours per frame. Those defaults produce GIFs typically under 2 MB for a 5-second clip, which fits past most messaging-app size limits and loads instantly in browsers.
The other big control is frame range. Most video-to-GIF use cases involve only a few seconds of the source video — a specific reaction, a particular movement, a single demo step. The tool’s timeline lets you pick start and end points just like Video Trimmer; the GIF only contains the frames in that range. For longer clips, dropping the frame rate from 30fps to 12–15fps cuts the file size roughly in half with little perceptual change for most content.
A practical note: if your destination supports modern video formats (MP4, WebM), use them instead — they are smaller, sharper, and support audio. GIF makes sense specifically when the destination cannot play video. For animated images that look better than GIF, consider WebP animation through Image to WebP — supported by most modern browsers, much smaller files, much better colour fidelity. The Video to GIF tool is here because there are still many places where GIF is the only option that works.
A WebAssembly build of FFmpeg loads inside this page the first time you use the tool, then runs entirely in your browser tab. Your video bytes are read into JavaScript memory, encoded to GIF locally, and returned as a downloadable blob — they never touch a server.
Server-side converters use bare-metal CPUs with FFmpeg compiled natively, often with hardware acceleration. WebAssembly runs in a single browser thread without GPU encoders, so it is typically 3–8× slower than a native FFmpeg run. The trade-off is total privacy: your file never leaves your device.
There is no hard cap, but GIFs balloon in size after about 8 seconds, especially above 480px wide. We recommend keeping clips under 10 seconds and using the trim controls to grab the moment you actually need.
GIF only supports 256 colors per frame and has no inter-frame compression, so a 5-second 480p GIF can easily exceed 5MB. To shrink the output: lower the frame rate (10–12fps is usually fine), reduce the width, or shorten the clip.
GIFs cannot contain audio. The audio track in your source video is automatically dropped during conversion.
MP4, WebM, MOV, MKV, AVI, FLV, OGV, and most other common containers your browser can decode. The tool reads the file with FFmpeg WASM, so you are not limited to formats your browser plays natively.
GIF is a lossy quantized format limited to 256 colors per frame, so subtle gradients and skin tones can band visibly. For higher-fidelity short loops, consider exporting WebM or MP4 instead — modern social platforms accept both.
No. We do not store, log, or transmit your video or the resulting GIF. Closing this tab clears the file from memory immediately.
GIF was designed in 1989 for static images and only later extended to support animation. It uses a per-frame palette of up to 256 colours and a basic compression scheme that cannot match modern video codecs which compress across frames as well as within them. A 5-second 1080p clip that is 200 KB as MP4 is typically 5–10 MB as GIF — a 25–50× difference. If your destination supports MP4, use it.
Three big levers. First, drop the dimensions — reducing from 720px wide to 480px wide cuts file size by more than half. Second, drop the frame rate — going from 30fps to 15fps roughly halves the file. Third, reduce the colour palette — 64 colours instead of 256 saves significant size with little perceptual change for most content. The defaults already apply moderate versions of all three.
Technically the tool will convert any range up to the full video, but GIFs longer than 10–15 seconds are usually wildly impractical — file sizes balloon into tens of MB even at small dimensions. For anything longer than a few seconds, MP4 is almost always the better answer if your destination supports it.
No — GIF does not support audio at all, by spec. If your video has narration or music that matters, GIF is the wrong format. Use MP4 or WebM, which preserve the audio track. Animated WebP also lacks audio but produces much smaller files than GIF for visual-only loops.
Yes — there is a separate GIF to MP4 tool (or use Video Converter with a GIF input) to go the other way. That conversion is usually a size win — the resulting MP4 is typically 5–20× smaller than the original GIF.
GIF’s 256-colour-per-frame limit means smooth gradients (skies, skin tones, fades) get dithered to the nearest palette colour. The default 128-colour setting trades some fidelity for smaller file size; if quality matters more than size, push the palette to 256 in the advanced settings. Even at 256 colours, GIF cannot match the colour depth of modern video.
It analyses the colour distribution across all frames in the trimmed range and picks the palette colours that best represent the visual content. This adaptive palette produces noticeably better-looking GIFs than the simpler "use a global default palette" approach that some converters take. The trade-off is a slightly slower encode.
Not directly in this tool — it focuses on the conversion itself. To add text overlays, do that in the source video first (using a video editor) and then convert to GIF, or convert to GIF first and then use a separate GIF-editing tool to add the overlays.
Screen Recorder
Record your screen, a window, or a browser tab directly in your browser. Optionally include system audio and your microphone. Capture, preview, and download the video without installing any app — and without uploading anything.
Webcam Recorder
Record your webcam directly in your browser with optional microphone audio. Pick the resolution (480p, 720p, or 1080p), frame rate, and mirror mode, then capture and download the result without installing any app.
Screen + Webcam Recorder
Record your screen with your webcam composited into a picture-in-picture corner — perfect for tutorials, course videos, demos, and reaction recordings. Pick the camera position, size, and audio sources, then capture and download in your browser.
Video Slideshow Maker
Turn a stack of photos into an MP4 slideshow with per-slide durations, crossfades, and an optional soundtrack. Pick the resolution (up to 1080p), frame rate, and transitions, then download a single MP4 — all processed in your browser with FFmpeg WebAssembly.
Video from Images + Audio
Combine a stack of photos with a music track or narration into a single MP4 video. Pick the resolution, per-slide duration, transitions, and let the slideshow length match the audio. All processed in your browser with FFmpeg WebAssembly.
Video Trimmer
Set precise in and out timestamps, snap to keyframes when needed, and document handles for social-safe cutdowns.
Video Splitter
Split any video into 2–10 equal-length pieces, packaged as a downloadable ZIP. Files are processed entirely in your browser with FFmpeg WebAssembly using lossless stream-copy.
Video Merger
Combine multiple video clips into a single MP4 in your browser. Drop in MP4, WebM, MOV, MKV, AVI or FLV files, drag to reorder them, pick a target resolution and frame rate, and merge — all locally with no uploads.