How to use the Video to GIF tool
- Add your videoDrop an MP4, WebM or MOV file onto the box or click to choose it.
- Pick the momentSet the start and end of the clip with the player buttons or by typing times. The first 5 seconds are selected to begin with.
- Choose size and speedSelect the width and frame rate. The number of frames and the estimated GIF size are shown.
- Create the GIFClick “Create GIF”. The GIF is built on your device and downloads automatically.
Features
- Optimized paletteOne carefully chosen 256-color palette is built for the whole clip, so colors stay stable between frames.
- Smaller files automaticallyPixels that don’t change between frames are stored only once, which keeps GIFs of mostly still scenes small.
- Optional ditheringTurn on “Smooth gradients” for skies, skin tones and shadows, at the cost of a bigger file.
- Loop or play onceLoop forever like a classic GIF, or play once and stop on the last frame.
- Private by designFrames are captured and encoded in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
Getting a great GIF
GIF is an old format: it supports only 256 colors per frame and has weak compression, so GIF files get large quickly. The trick is to keep them short and small. These settings work well for most uses:
| Use | Width | Frame rate | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chat reaction or meme | 320 px | 10 fps | 2–4 s |
| Product demo or tutorial step | 480–640 px | 10–12 fps | 3–8 s |
| Website hero or blog post | 480 px | 8–10 fps | under 6 s |
| Email newsletter | 320–480 px | 8 fps | under 4 s |
Halving the width makes a GIF about four times smaller. Dropping from 15 fps to 10 fps saves a third.
GIF or video?
GIFs autoplay and loop everywhere, including in emails, documents and chat apps that don’t play video inline, which is why they are still popular. For anything longer than a few seconds, a video is far smaller and sharper. If your GIF is too large, consider sharing a short video instead: trim and compress it.
What does dithering do?
Because a GIF can only show 256 colors, smooth gradients like skies can show visible bands. Dithering mixes nearby palette colors in a fine pattern to fake the missing shades. It looks smoother but makes the file noticeably bigger, so leave it off for screen recordings, cartoons and text, and turn it on for real-world footage with gradients.
How it works
The tool steps through your video at the chosen frame rate and captures each frame at the chosen size, then builds a shared color palette, maps every frame to it and compresses the result with the GIF format’s LZW compression. Everything runs in your browser, so your video stays on your device. To make a GIF from images instead, or to edit a frame, see our image tools.