Video to GIF
How to use
Turns a short part of a video into an animated GIF. Drop an MP4, WebM or MOV, set the start time, length, frame rate and width, and download the GIF.
Step 1 of 4: Upload
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Step 1 of 4 · Upload
- 1Upload
- 2Options
- 3Convert
- 4Download
- Adding a short demo of a feature to a GitHub README or pull request
- Making a reaction GIF from your own video clip
- Showing a UI interaction in documentation or a support article
- Embedding motion in an email, where video will not play
Free and private. Everything runs on your own device, with no account and no uploads.
A GIF plays automatically, loops, needs no player and works in places video does not: chat apps, GitHub READMEs, documentation, email signatures and old forums. This tool takes a short section of an MP4, WebM or MOV file and turns it into an animated GIF, frame by frame. You choose the start, length, frame rate and width; the video is seeked precisely to each frame in your browser, so the result is exact regardless of how fast your device is.
GIF compresses poorly compared with video. Size grows with width squared, frame rate and length, so a 10-second, 800 px, 20 fps GIF can exceed 20 MB. Halving the width alone cuts the size by about three quarters.
GIF is limited to 256 colours per frame. Each frame gets its own optimised palette, but smooth gradients and skin tones can still show banding: it is a limit of the format.
No. GIF has no audio. For sound, keep the video or extract the audio with MP4 to MP3.
Recent iPhones record HEVC (H.265), which browsers other than Safari often cannot decode. Open the page in Safari, or set the iPhone camera to Most Compatible to record H.264.
The GIF stops at 400 frames, 40 seconds at 10 fps, because anything longer becomes too large to be useful.
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Add a video
Drop an MP4, WebM or MOV clip. Screen recordings are ideal.
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Choose the section
Set the start time and the length in seconds. Shorter GIFs are much smaller.
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Set frame rate and width
10 fps at 480 px is a good default. Raise the fps for fast motion.
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Convert and download
Frames are captured one by one and encoded into the GIF.
- ·Keep GIFs under about 5 seconds and 480 px for chat apps
- ·Screen recordings with flat colours make far smaller, cleaner GIFs than camera footage
- ·Use 5 fps for slideshows or slow UI changes: it looks fine and cuts size in half