video → gif · gif maker
Make a GIF from a clip, right here in the tab
Drop in an MP4, MOV or almost anything else and get a looping GIF back. The palette is calculated from your own footage rather than a fixed one, which is the difference between a clean loop and a muddy one.
Processed on your own hardware · never transmitted, never stored
What happens when you drop a file in
The file stays put. Your browser opens it the same way an image viewer would. There is no transfer, which is why there is no upload bar to watch.
An encoder arrives once. The first job on this site pulls down a compiled build of FFmpeg, roughly 30 MB. It is kept afterwards, so every job after the first starts immediately.
Your own hardware does the job. The work happens in this tab, on your processor. A laptop from the last few years handles short clips in well under real time.
The result lands in Downloads. Assembled in memory and handed straight to your browser. Close the tab and every trace of it is gone.
GIFs are enormous, and here is the reason
The format dates to 1987 and predates every compression idea that makes modern video small. Each frame is stored whole, limited to 256 colours, with nothing carried over from the frame before it. Nothing about that has changed in nearly forty years.
In practice that means length and width drive size almost linearly. Ten seconds at 480 pixels wide usually lands somewhere between three and six megabytes; widen it to 640 and you can double that without adding a single second.
Most converters hand every clip the same generic palette, which is why so many online GIFs have banded skies and grey-looking skin. This one analyses your specific frames first and picks the 256 colours that suit them. It costs an extra pass and is worth it every time.
When a GIF is the wrong answer
If whatever you are posting to accepts video, post video — a short MP4 is smaller, sharper and smoother than the GIF of the same moment, every time. GIF earns its place only where autoplay is required and video is refused: certain email clients, older forums, a handful of chat widgets. Outside those, you are paying a large size penalty for nothing.
Common questions
Why did my GIF come out so large?
Duration first, then width. Cutting the clip in half does more for size than any other change you can make.
Can I feed it a long video?
It will work and the result will be unusable. Trim to ten seconds or under before converting.
The colours look flatter than the video.
GIF permits 256 colours per frame and no more. Choosing the best 256 for your clip, as this does, gets you closer than most tools, but smooth gradients will always band somewhat.
Does the clip get sent anywhere?
No. It is read from your disk, converted in this tab, and handed back. Nothing touches a server.