Video to GIF
Turn a few seconds of a clip into an animated GIF, with the size shown before you make it.
A small task starts here.
Drop your video here, paste it, or choose from your device.
Up to 100 MB · any video this browser can play · Processed locallyResult
Choose a video and the result appears here automatically.
Video to GIF, without the extra steps.
Pick the seconds you want on the timeline, choose how many frames a second to take, and the animation is built in your browser and plays on the page. The projected file size is on screen while you are still choosing — a GIF has no compression between frames, so an unbounded clip turns into a download nobody wants, and seeing that number before you commit is the difference between this and the converters that mail you a 200 MB file.
How to use this tool
- 1Open a video. The first frame appears and the range starts at as much as one animation holds.
- 2Drag the in and out points, and set the frames a second and the width.
- 3Watch the GIF play on the page, then download it.
When Video to GIF is the right tool
- A three-second reaction from a film has to go in a chat that plays GIFs inline but hides videos behind a click.
- A bug report needs the moment the layout jumps, and the tracker accepts images but not video.
- A README should show the tool running, and GitHub renders a GIF in the page while an MP4 becomes a link.
- A product page wants a short loop of the interface and cannot carry a video player.
- An email newsletter needs motion, and a GIF is the only moving thing most mail clients will render.
- A slide deck needs a looping clip that plays without anyone pressing anything.
The size is on screen before you make it
GIF compresses each frame on its own — there is nothing like the between-frames compression that makes a video small — so the file grows with the frame count and with the pixels in each frame, and it grows fast. The projected size sits under the timeline and moves as you drag the handles or change the width, so the choice between a 400 KB loop and a 12 MB one is made while you are still choosing. After the run the real number replaces the estimate.
Frames a second is not a free dial
Sixty frames is what one animation holds here, and the frame rate decides how you spend them: twelve seconds at five frames a second, six at ten, three at twenty. Lower rates look like a flipbook and higher ones eat the range, so the page shows the frame count as you move either control rather than letting you discover the limit at the end. A screen recording reads fine at eight; a moving camera usually needs twelve or more.
GIF cannot store every frame rate you can ask for
A frame's delay is written in hundredths of a second, so only some rates exist: 5 fps is exactly 200 ms, 10 is 100, 12 is 80, 20 is 50. Ask for 15 and the nearest delay is 70 ms, which plays at 14.3 frames a second — not what you typed. Rather than repeating your number back, the field shows what the file will really do, and the four rates that land exactly are one tap away.
256 colours, and the choice that decides how it looks
Each frame gets its own palette of at most 256 colours chosen from its own pixels. Flat gives every pixel the nearest colour the palette holds: smaller files, and correct for screen recordings, flat artwork and text. Blended mixes neighbouring pixels to fake the colours that are missing, which keeps skin tones and skies smooth and roughly doubles the file, because the speckle breaks up the runs the compression is looking for. Switching re-encodes immediately, so it is a thing you look at rather than a thing you reason about.
A few quick answers.
Open a video. The first frame appears and the range starts at as much as one animation holds. Drag the in and out points, and set the frames a second and the width. Watch the GIF play on the page, then download it.
Tool inputs are processed in your browser. Crate has no upload endpoint and no accounts. Downloaded site assets and a cookie-free page-view count still require a connection; your files and text are not included in those requests.
Sixty frames, however you spend them: six seconds at ten frames a second, twelve at five, three at twenty. The page works out the frame count from the range and the rate as you move them, and says which number to change when you go past it.
GIF has no audio track at all — it is an image format that happens to hold several pictures. If the clip depends on what is being said, a trimmed video serves better than an animation of it. Video trimmer cuts a clip and keeps its sound.
Any video your browser can play, which in practice means H.264 MP4, MOV, and WebM, and often more. Frames are read by seeking the same decoder that plays the file, so there is no separate list of supported containers to fall foul of — and unlike the trimmer, WebM works. A file your browser cannot decode is refused with the codec named rather than failing silently.
Because a video stores mostly the differences between frames while a GIF stores every frame as a complete picture, in 256 colours, compressed one at a time. A ten-second clip that is 2 MB as an MP4 can easily be 15 MB as a GIF. That is the format, not this tool — which is why the projected size is shown before you commit and why the width and frame rate are the two controls that matter most.
The in and out points can be typed as timecodes and nudged with the arrow keys, and the preview shows exactly where they land. The frames that end up in the GIF are then spread evenly across that range, so the first one is the frame at your in-point and the last is the one at your out-point.