Video to GIF
Turn a moment of video into an animated GIF — pick the seconds, frame rate and size.
About this converter
Pick the start point and length (up to ten seconds), a frame rate and a width, and the tool grabs frames from the decoded video and encodes a GIF in your browser. Preview, then download. Nothing is uploaded.
Making a GIF people can actually send
GIF is a 1989 format kept alive by chat apps, and its costs are real: every frame is a full image limited to 256 colours with no real compression, so a ten-second, 480-pixel, 15-fps clip can weigh more than the video it came from. The defaults — 3 seconds, 320 px, 10 fps — produce the classic shareable reaction size; go longer or bigger only when you must. Colours posterise slightly (the format, not the tool), and fast motion at low frame rates stutters, so 15 fps is worth the bytes for action. Frames are captured from the video decoded on your device and encoded by an open-source encoder in the page; every browser that plays your video can make a GIF of it. For anything longer than a few seconds, a muted video beats a GIF on every axis — the trimmer cuts the clip and the compressor shrinks it. From a set of still images instead, the GIF maker.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the GIF bigger than the video?
Because GIF has no real compression — each frame is stored nearly whole. Shorter, smaller and fewer frames per second are the only levers; the defaults are tuned for shareable size.
Is the video uploaded?
No — the browser decodes it locally, frames are grabbed from the decoded picture, and the GIF encoder runs in the page.
Why 10 seconds maximum?
Beyond that a GIF becomes enormous and jerky; a short muted video is better in every way. The cap keeps the output honest.
Which video formats work?
Anything your browser plays: MP4 (H.264), WebM and most MOV files. Exotic codecs the browser can't decode won't work here either.