Video to GIF
Cut a clip and turn it into a GIF with clean colours
Loadingโฆ
Was this tool helpful?
About this tool
Cut a section out of a video and turn it into a GIF. GIF only supports 256 colours, which is why they often look blotchy - so this tool first collects the colours actually used in that clip, then paints with that palette. It is slower than a one-shot conversion, but the difference shows on skies, skin and other large areas of similar colour.
How to use
- Load a video and enter the start point and length in seconds.
- Choose the frame rate and width. Those two dominate the file size.
- Press Make GIF.
- Check the preview and download it.
Frequently asked questions
- My GIF is far too big.
- Length matters most, then frame rate, then width. Going from 5 seconds to 3, 15fps to 10, or 480px to 320px shrinks it noticeably. GIF stores a whole image per frame, so it does not compress the way video does.
- What is the two-pass method?
- A GIF can hold only 256 colours. A generic palette wastes entries on colours the clip never uses and runs short on the ones it needs, which causes banding. Building a palette from the clip itself (palettegen) and then painting with it (paletteuse) looks far cleaner at the same size.
- What happens to the audio?
- GIF cannot carry audio at all. If you need sound, keep the video, or pull the audio out separately with the audio extractor.
- How long a clip can I make?
- There is no hard limit, but past ten seconds you get a warning. Beyond that GIFs easily reach tens of megabytes, which many messengers and forums reject.
Conversion happens entirely in your browser and the file is never uploaded. The two-pass approach takes a little longer than a single-pass conversion of the same length. The first run has to fetch the processor (about 32MB).