Convert video to GIF

No. The conversion runs entirely in your browser. The file never leaves your device – there is no server that could see it. Once the page has loaded, the tool even works offline.

The video is encoded on your own device with FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly, which is several times slower than a native program. Expect roughly one to three minutes per minute of 720p video on a laptop, more on a phone. Short clips are the sweet spot; for a two-hour film use a desktop program. The engine (about 32 MB) is downloaded once per visit.

GIF is a 1987 format with no real video compression: every frame is stored as an image with at most 256 colours. Size grows with width × frame rate × length. 480 pixels wide at 12 frames per second is a good compromise; for chat and social media, 320 pixels and 10 frames per second are often enough.

We generate a colour palette from your clip first (palettegen) and then map the frames onto it with dithering (paletteuse) – the two-pass approach FFmpeg recommends. A single-pass conversion uses a generic palette and shows visible banding.

Files up to 300 MB are accepted, and a job is stopped after ten minutes. The whole file has to fit into the browser's memory, so clips of a few minutes work best. If processing stops, trim the clip first or lower the resolution.

We remove the file's global metadata, including the recording location an iPhone stores in MOV and MP4 files. Rotation information is applied, so the video keeps its orientation.