Video to GIF converter

Why GIFs get big so quickly

A GIF stores every frame as a separate picture with at most 256 colours. Video formats store only what changes between frames, which is why the same clip is many times larger as a GIF. Its size grows with three things: the number of frames, the number of pixels in each frame, and how busy the picture is.

We turned two 10 second clips into GIFs at 480 by 270 pixels with this converter:

Screen recordings, cartoons and simple animations make good GIFs: flat colours suit the palette, and the result looked almost identical to the original. Camera footage does not. Grain, foliage and water change in every frame, and smooth areas break into bands of flat colour. The full comparison is in GIF vs MP4 vs WebM.

The settings, one by one

• The part of the video. Drag the start and end on the timeline, or play to a moment and set it there. The shorter the clip, the smaller the GIF: two to four seconds is enough for most loops.
• Frames per second. 12 is the default and looks smooth for most motion. 10 to 15 is the useful range; going higher multiplies the size and rarely looks better.
• Width. 480 pixels suits chat apps, documentation and most web pages. Each doubling of the width means about four times as many pixels in every frame.
• Colours. 128 is the default. Fewer colours make a smaller file and work for screen recordings and graphics; raise it to 256 for photos and skin tones that look blotchy.
• Loop. Forever is what people expect from a GIF. Play once suits a short demonstration that should stop on its last frame.

The converter shows how many frames your choice makes before you start, and warns above 300. A 10 second camera clip at 12 frames per second took about 22 seconds to convert in our test, since each of its 120 frames gets its own palette.

When a video is the better answer

Use a GIF where video cannot play: most email apps, some forums and documentation tools, and places that only accept pictures. On a web page, a short muted video that loops does the same job at a fraction of the size, and phones play it without a tap. The video converter makes a small MP4 or WebM, and trim video cuts it to the moment you want.

If something goes wrong

• It says the GIF would have too many frames. The limit is 1,500. Choose a shorter part of the video or a lower frame rate.
• The GIF is too big for the site or chat. Lower the width first, then the frame rate, then the colours. Shortening the clip helps most of all.
• Colours look banded or blotchy. Raise the colours to 256. Camera footage will still show some bands; that is the limit of the format.
• Converting is slow and a note mentions WebCodecs. Without it, the browser has to seek to every frame one by one. Chrome, Edge and recent Safari and Firefox read frames much faster.

How we tested. Two 10 second clips drawn in Chrome at 1920 by 1080 and 30 fps, one panning across a CC0 photo with grain, one an app window with typing and a growing chart. Converted with this tool at 480 by 270 and 128 colours, and with the video converter to MP4 at the same size.