Video to GIF
Video to GIF — Free Converter in Your Browser
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Pick a clip, get a GIF. Conversion happens locally in your browser — your video never leaves your device.
Want a GIF of a screen recording? Pullsy records at 1080p with proper FPS — perfect for GIFs. Record your screen →
Pick a clip, get a GIF. Conversion happens locally in your browser — your video never leaves your device.
How it works
Pick your video
Drop a MP4, MOV, WebM, or any other video file. We support any input that ffmpeg can read.
Set start, end, width, FPS
Pick the time range to convert (default 0 → 3 seconds), the output width (default 480 px), and the frame rate (default 12 fps). Lower FPS = smaller file.
Click 'Load converter' and download
ffmpeg.wasm loads on first use (~31 MB) and generates the GIF with a two-pass palette for better color and smaller files. The GIF is ready to download in seconds.
How long does it take?
For a 3-second clip at 480px and 12 fps, generation takes 5–10 seconds on a modern laptop. Longer clips, larger widths, and higher FPS scale linearly. We use a two-pass palette generation (palettegen + paletteuse) for the best quality-to-size ratio in GIF format.
What's the right width and FPS?
For a Slack/Discord GIF, 480px at 10–12 fps is the sweet spot — readable at chat size, small file (~1–2 MB for a 3s clip). For a Twitter GIF, 720px at 15 fps looks better but is larger (~3–5 MB). For a documentation GIF that needs to show fine detail (e.g., cursor movement), 800px at 15 fps is the upper limit before files get unwieldy.
When a GIF beats a video
GIFs look dated, but they are still the right answer for some places. Chat that doesn't autoplay video. Slack, Discord, IRC, most email clients, and many forums will not autoplay video inline. GIFs autoplay everywhere. Documentation that needs to show motion. A 3-second GIF of a button click is more readable than a 3-second MP4 that requires the reader to click play. Most documentation systems (Notion, Confluence, GitHub) embed GIFs inline. Loop demos. A 2-second loop of a UI state or a code typing effect. The looping is built into the format — no extra work. Social media drafts. A quick GIF of a UI flow for Twitter or LinkedIn, before committing to a full video render.
How the GIF encoder works
We use ffmpeg.wasm 0.12 with a two-pass palette generation. The first pass generates an optimal color palette from the source frames; the second pass uses that palette to quantize each frame. ``` ffmpeg -ss 0 -t 3 -i input.mp4 -vf 'fps=12,scale=480:-1:flags=lanczos,palettegen' palette.png ffmpeg -ss 0 -t 3 -i input.mp4 -i palette.png -lavfi 'fps=12,scale=480:-1:flags=lanczos[x];[x][1:v]paletteuse' output.gif ``` GIFs are limited to 256 colors per frame, which is why the palette pass matters — without it, you get banding and weird color shifts in skin tones and gradients.
Privacy and how we handle your data
We do not upload your video to any server. Conversion happens entirely in your browser via ffmpeg.wasm. Your video never leaves your device. The output GIF is a Blob URL pointing at in-memory data. The only network traffic is the initial 31 MB ffmpeg.wasm download (cached by your browser).
Can I make a GIF with a transparent background?
Not from a video with ffmpeg's standard GIF encoder. GIF supports a single transparent color per frame, but ffmpeg's GIF muxer does not preserve the alpha channel. For true transparency, convert to APNG or WebP instead — those formats support full alpha. We do not have a WebP/APNG tool yet; the GIF format is the right choice for a chat-friendly, broadly-compatible loop.
Why is my GIF still large?
GIF is a 1980s format and is not great at compressing modern video. The single biggest lever is frame rate: a 12 fps GIF is ~20% the size of a 24 fps GIF for the same content. The second lever is width: 480px is fine for chat, 800px is for documentation. The third lever is length: trim the clip to the part that matters.
Can I do a longer GIF?
Yes, but file size grows fast. A 10-second clip at 480px and 12 fps is usually 4–8 MB. Slack starts to struggle above 8 MB GIFs. For longer captures, use the Video Compressor or Trim first to get a tighter clip, then convert to GIF.