Video to GIF

A good GIF is a short section, not too wide, and not trying to be smooth. Those three choices decide almost the whole file size, and the estimate updates as you change them so you do not end up with a 40 MB GIF nobody can post.

How to use it

1 Add a video and scrub to the section you want.
2 Set the start and end points. Under five seconds is usually the right target.
3 Choose a width and how smooth the motion should be. 480 pixels wide is a safe default.
4 Generate the GIF and download it.

Formats this tool accepts

Each one has a reference page covering what it stores and where it is supported.

Questions about video to gif

Why is my GIF so large?

GIF has no motion compression, so every frame is stored almost in full. Size scales with width times height times frame count. Halving the width cuts the file to roughly a quarter, and dropping from 30 to 12 frames per second cuts it by more than half again.

Why does the colour look wrong?

GIF allows only 256 colours per frame. Gradients, skies and skin tones cannot be represented exactly, so the encoder dithers, which shows as speckle. Clips with flat, graphic colour survive the palette far better than film footage does.

Should I use a video instead?

Wherever the platform allows it, yes. A short MP4 or WebM is routinely twenty times smaller than the same clip as a GIF and looks far better. GIF is worth it only where nothing but an image will be accepted.

Are my files uploaded to a server?

No. The whole thing runs inside the browser tab you already have open. Your file is read straight from your own disk, worked on there, and handed back as a download. Nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored, and there is no account and no queue.

Is there a file size limit?

There is no server-side limit because there is no server. The practical ceiling is your device memory, since the file and its output both have to fit in the tab. Files up to a few hundred megabytes are usually fine on a desktop machine, while phones and older laptops will struggle sooner. If a large file fails, close other tabs and try again.

Does it work offline?

Yes, once the page has loaded once. The engine is cached by the browser, so you can turn off your connection, reload the page and keep working. That is a useful side effect of doing the processing locally rather than a separate offline mode you have to enable.