How to convert a video to GIF
- Drop a video file. It must be a format your browser can play: MP4 (H.264) and WebM work everywhere, MOV works in Safari.
- Set the start and end time; the first five seconds are selected to begin with. Short clips of 2–6 seconds make the best GIFs.
- Choose the frame rate and width. 10–15 fps at 360–480 px wide is a good balance between smoothness and file size.
- Click Make GIF, check the preview and download it. Try Boomerang for a back-and-forth loop.
Keeping GIFs small
GIF is an old format: every frame is stored as a full image with at most 256 colors, so file size grows quickly with width, frame rate and length. Halving the width roughly quarters the size; dropping from 15 to 10 fps saves a third. Dithering scatters pixels to fake smooth gradients and looks better on skies and skin, but compresses worse; turn it off for screen recordings and flat graphics. Many platforms limit GIFs to around 8–15 MB.
The encoder builds one optimised 256-color palette from frames across the clip with median-cut quantisation, maps each frame with optional Floyd–Steinberg dithering, and compresses it with LZW, exactly as the GIF89a standard specifies. Frames are captured by seeking the video in your browser, so nothing is uploaded and no watermark is added.
Why can't my video be opened?
The browser could not decode it. HEVC/H.265 videos from iPhones play in Safari but not always in Chrome; convert to MP4 (H.264) or share as "Most Compatible".
Does the GIF include sound?
No. GIF images cannot contain audio.
How long can the GIF be?
Up to 400 frames, for example 40 seconds at 10 fps, though files that long will be large.