Video to GIF
Pick a section of any video and turn it into an animated GIF. Your file never leaves the browser.
How to Use
- 1. Upload a video file, or drop it onto the page.
- 2. Set the start and end of the section you want, up to 15 seconds.
- 3. Choose the frame rate, width and colour count.
- 4. Create the GIF and download it.
Keeping a GIF Small
GIF is a 1987 format and it shows. Unlike video, it stores every frame as a complete image with no compression between frames, and it allows at most 256 colours in each one. That combination is why a five-second clip that occupies 400 KB as MP4 can balloon past 5 MB as a GIF.
Because the size scales with total pixels, the levers are not equally useful. Shortening the clip and reducing the width do the most work — halving the width quarters the pixel count. Frame rate is next: 10 fps reads as smooth for most motion, and dropping from 20 to 10 halves the frame count outright. Colour count matters least, so reach for it last.
Each frame here gets its own quantised palette rather than sharing one across the clip. That costs a little size but preserves colour much better when the scene changes partway through, which a single global palette handles badly.
Related: Video Frame Grabber, Extract Audio from Video, and Reduce Image Size.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is my video uploaded to a server?
No. The video is decoded by your browser, frames are drawn to a canvas, and the GIF is encoded locally. Nothing is transmitted, which also means the tool keeps working if you go offline after the page loads.
Why is there a 15-second limit?
Because GIF stores every frame as a separate image rather than compressing across frames. At 10 frames per second, 15 seconds is already 150 full images, and both the encoding time and the file size climb linearly from there.
How do I make the GIF file smaller?
In order of impact: shorten the clip, lower the width, then lower the frame rate, then reduce the colour count. Halving the width cuts the pixel count to a quarter, so it usually helps far more than dropping from 128 colours to 64.
Why does my GIF look banded or posterised?
GIF allows a maximum of 256 colours per frame, so every gradient has to be approximated by a limited palette. Raising the colour count is the direct fix. Footage with smooth skies, shadows or fades suffers most, while flat graphics and screen recordings barely show it.
Which video formats work?
Anything your browser can play — MP4 and WebM everywhere, MOV in most browsers. If a file will not load, it is because the browser cannot decode that codec, not because of a size limit.
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