How it works
- 01
Add a video
Drop it or choose it. It plays here first, so you can find the part you want.
- 02
Set the clip
Pick a start and a length, then the frame rate and the width.
- 03
Make the GIF
The bar fills, the file downloads. Nothing is uploaded.
Why GIFs get big, and what to do
A GIF stores whole frames. There is no motion between them the way a video has, so ten seconds at 24 frames a second is 240 pictures in one file. That is why a short clip can come out larger than the video it came from.
Three settings decide the size, and they work in this order. Length matters most, then width, then frame rate. Cutting a ten second clip to four does more than any other change you can make.
12 frames a second still reads as movement and halves the count against 24. 480 pixels wide is plenty for a chat window or a README. Start there and only raise them if it looks wrong.
- Input
- MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM and AVI. One video at a time.
- Frame rate
- 8 to 24 frames a second. 12 is the usual choice.
- Palette
- Built from your own clip, up to 256 colours, with three dithering choices.
- Trim
- Start and length in seconds, so only the part you want is read.
256 colours, and the trick that hides it
A GIF can hold 256 colours at once, and a photo has far more. So the tool looks at your clip first, builds the best 256 colour palette for it, then draws every frame against that palette. A palette built from your own footage beats a fixed one every time.
Dithering is how the missing colours are faked: pixels of two colours sit side by side and your eye mixes them. Bayer uses a regular pattern and keeps the file small. Sierra looks smoother on gradients and costs more bytes. None gives flat blocks, which suits cartoons and screen recordings.
Dropping to 64 colours shrinks the file. You see it on a sky or a skin tone long before a screen recording. Try it on flat material first.