Video to GIF

📖 Tool Introduction

Turn a video clip into an animated GIF entirely in your browser, with the video never leaving your device. Pick a clip, say where it starts and how long it runs, choose a width and frame rate, and press start.

A GIF differs from video in three ways that matter here: no sound, a much larger file, and far fewer colours. GIF holds 256 colours, so gradients and dark areas band badly. Colour optimisation is on by default and builds a palette from the clip before applying it, which visibly reduces banding. Turning it off is faster at the cost of rougher colour.

Size is the practical constraint. Five seconds at 640 wide and 12 frames lands around two or three megabytes, while 320 wide at 8 frames fits in a few hundred kilobytes. For a reaction image, 320 wide at 8 to 10 frames is enough and survives being reposted in chat. Raise it only when detail matters. Frame rate drives size harder than width does, so cut frames first.

Time fields accept decimals, so 1.5 starts one and a half seconds in. Leaving duration empty runs to the end of the video. Keeping clips under ten seconds is wise, since longer ones produce GIFs too large to send anywhere.

Processing uses a WebAssembly build of FFmpeg, which downloads about 24 MB the first time and is cached afterwards. Nothing is uploaded and the source video stays on your machine.

One more thing worth knowing before you start: a GIF carries no sound, so any audio in the clip is dropped. If you need the sound, keep the video or export the audio separately, because no setting here brings it back.

✨ Key Features

• Any segment: set a start time and duration, both in decimal seconds
• Four widths: 320, 480, 640, 800, or keep the original
• Five frame rates: 8, 10, 12, 15 and 24 fps
• Palette optimisation that visibly reduces colour banding
• Looping output, so the GIF repeats indefinitely
• Batch mode: add several videos and each one is converted in turn

🚀 How to Use

1. Drag a video into the drop area, or click to choose one
2. Set the start time and the duration, both in seconds
3. Choose width and frame rate: for reaction images use 320 wide at 8 to 10 frames, and leave colour optimisation on unless speed matters more
4. Press start and watch the progress bar
5. Press download to save the GIF

⚠️ Things to Note

• Engine size: The first run downloads about 24 MB of WebAssembly engine. The browser caches it, so later visits skip the download
• Keeping size down: GIF size climbs fast with width and frame rate, so cut frames first. Trim anything over ten seconds before converting
• Colour limit: GIF holds 256 colours, so gradients and dark areas can band. Palette optimisation helps a great deal and is on by default, but it cannot remove banding entirely, since the format itself is the limit rather than the encoder
• Browser memory: Everything happens in browser memory, so a very long video can exhaust it. Keep clips under about thirty seconds, and if a run fails silently, trimming the input shorter is the first thing worth trying
• Privacy: The video is processed locally and never uploaded. Reloading the page clears it completely