Video to GIF
Two-pass palette conversion, so the result does not come out muddy and banded.
Your file
Drop a file here, or click to choose
It stays on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Settings
Why two passes
A GIF can only hold 256 colors. Most converters use a fixed generic palette, which is why web GIFs so often look dirty. This tool runs FFmpeg twice: the first pass studies your actual footage and builds a palette from the colors in it, and the second pass renders using that palette. It costs a few extra seconds and the difference is obvious.
Keeping the file small
GIF has no motion compression worth the name, every frame is stored nearly whole. Three things control the size, in order of impact:
- Length. Five seconds is a good ceiling. Ten is pushing it.
- Width. 480 px is plenty for a chat or a README. 320 px halves the size again.
- Frame rate. 12 to 15 fps reads as smooth for most footage. 24 fps doubles the size for very little gain.
Bayer dithering gives the smallest files and a slight crosshatch texture. Sierra looks smoother on gradients like skies and sunsets, at a larger size.
What dithering is doing
With only 256 colours available, a gradient has to be faked. Dithering scatters pixels of two available colours in a pattern that reads as a third from any distance, which is how a GIF describes a sky at all. Turning it off gives clean flat areas and hard visible steps wherever the picture was smooth. Neither setting is correct in general; flat UI footage is better without it, and anything with sky, skin or shadow is better with it.
The graininess people notice in GIFs is almost always dithering rather than a fault in the source. It is the price of the format, not of this tool.
Content decides the size more than settings do
GIF compresses by storing what changed between frames, so how much of the frame moves matters enormously. A static shot of someone talking, or a screen recording where only a cursor moves, gives it almost nothing to record and comes out small. A handheld shot, a pan, or anything where the whole frame shifts gives it everything, because every pixel changed and there is no shortcut.
The practical consequence is that identical settings can produce a 900 KB file from one clip and 14 MB from another. If a GIF is coming out enormous, a moving camera is usually why, and the fix is a shorter clip or a tighter crop rather than a lower quality setting, of which GIF has none.
Ask whether it should be a GIF
GIF survives because it plays inline everywhere with no player and no click. That is its entire advantage. On every other measure a short MP4 beats it comfortably: a fraction of the size, millions of colours instead of 256, and no dithering. Use GIF for a README, a chat window, an email or a forum that strips video. If the destination takes video, compress video will give you something better and smaller.
For building an animation out of separate images rather than a clip, images to GIF is the tool, and it uses the same palette approach.
Common questions
Why is my GIF enormous?
It is too long, too wide or too many frames per second. A 5 second, 480 px, 15 fps GIF usually lands between 2 and 5 MB.
Should I use a GIF at all?
If the destination accepts video, no. A 3 MB GIF is often a 200 KB MP4. Use GIF where autoplaying silent video is not supported, like some chat apps and email.
Can I make a transparent GIF?
Not from video. The source has no alpha channel to preserve.