Video · 17
Video to GIF
Cut a reaction, a title card, or a three-second loop out of a video and download a GIF. Trim, frame rate, and width are the only knobs, because those are the ones that decide the file size.
This clip would run 3.0s at 10 fps and 480px wide. The cap is 15s.
How to make a GIF someone will actually load
Set the start a few frames before the motion and the end as soon as the point lands. Dead air at the head of a GIF is pure weight. If the source player could not read the duration, type the times from your editor’s timecode. They are seconds, not frames.
480 pixels wide and 10 or 12 frames per second is the default that still looks like motion on a phone and does not choke a chat app. Drop to 320 pixels and 8 fps for a meme. Use 640 pixels only when the frame has text someone must read. Wider than that is not offered, on purpose.
The encoder scales with Lanczos, generates a palette from the trimmed frames, and dithers with a Bayer pattern. Gradients and smoke will still band. That is the format. If the moment is longer than about ten seconds, post the video. The hard cap here is fifteen seconds so a forgotten end-time cannot freeze the tab.
Preview the image on the page before you download it. Banding and a bad in-point are obvious at a glance and cheaper to fix than after you have posted it.
Tips
- 8 fps is enough for a simple reaction. 15 fps is for something that actually moves.
- White titles on a flat background survive GIF better than a detailed background plate.
- Looping is on. If the first and last frames do not match, the loop will jump. Trim so they almost do, or do not pretend it is seamless.
- Source files over 200 MB are refused. Transcode a proxy in your editor if the camera original is huge.
FAQ
Why is the GIF so large?
Every frame is a full picture, and GIF only has 256 colors. Width, frame rate, and duration multiply. Cut one of them. A 480 pixel, 10 fps, four second GIF is usually the one you can post.
Does the GIF include sound?
No. The GIF format has no audio. Use the MP3 tool if you also need the sound.
What does the palette step do?
The encoder looks at the frames you kept, builds a 256-color palette from them, then writes the GIF with that palette. Flat titles and skin tones stay cleaner than a one-pass conversion.
How long can the clip be?
Fifteen seconds. Past that the file is rarely worth posting and the tab has to hold every frame. Trim tighter if you can.
Is the video uploaded?
No. ffmpeg.wasm reads the file in the tab. The first visit downloads about 31 MB of that runtime and caches it.