How to make a GIF from a video

1. Open the Video to GIF converter and choose your video (MP4 and MOV from phones work in every browser).
2. Set the start and end of the part you want, the width (480 px by default) and the frame rate (12 fps by default). The converter shows the expected file size.
3. Press convert, check the preview, and download the GIF.

Everything runs in your browser, so a large video file does not need to be uploaded first. The rest of this guide is about choosing those settings well.

GIF is from 1987. It stores every frame as a picture of at most 256 colours and compresses it with a simple lossless method. It has none of the tricks video codecs use, such as storing only what changed between frames efficiently or keeping millions of colours cheaply.

The result: a 5-second clip that is 1 MB as MP4 can easily be 10–15 MB as a GIF. File size grows with three things multiplied together:

• width × height (pixels per frame),
• frames per second,
• seconds.

Halve any one of them and the file roughly halves. Halve the width and the pixel count drops to a quarter.

Good GIFs are short: a reaction, a single motion, a UI demo of one click. 2–4 seconds covers most of them, and loops make them feel longer. Beyond about 6 seconds, ask whether a short MP4 would serve better; most chats and sites autoplay silent videos just like GIFs.

Trim precisely: start on the first frame of the action and stop as soon as it ends. If the motion returns close to its starting position, the loop looks seamless. The converter warns when a GIF covers more than 30 seconds, because such files get very large.

GIFs are usually seen inside a chat bubble or a column of text, not full screen.

• 240 px: tiny stickers, emoji-like reactions.
• 320 px: chat reactions, forum signatures, tight size limits.
• 480 px (default): chats, social posts, documentation.
• 640 px: tutorials and screen recordings where small text must stay readable.

The converter never enlarges: if the video is narrower than the width you pick, the GIF keeps the video’s width. Height follows from the video’s shape, so a vertical phone video at 480 px wide is tall; consider 320 px for those.

Video is usually 30 or 60 frames per second. GIFs rarely need that.

• 8–10 fps: fine for slow motion, screen recordings, talking heads. Smallest files.
• 12 fps (default): smooth enough for most movement.
• 15–20 fps: fast action, sports, game clips. Files grow quickly.

Going from 12 to 24 fps doubles the file size and, inside a small chat window, most people cannot tell the difference. Lower the frame rate before you lower the width; a smaller, smoother GIF often looks worse than a slightly choppier, bigger one.

Limits change, and each platform publishes its own, so check the current one where you post. As working targets:

• Chat apps and email: under 5 MB sends quickly everywhere and does not get re-compressed as often.
• Social posts and forums: many cap GIFs somewhere between 5 and 15 MB, and some convert them to video on upload anyway.
• On your own website: under 1–2 MB per GIF, or better, an MP4 or WEBP animation.

A useful rule of thumb: at 480 px and 12 fps, a typical phone clip costs very roughly 0.5–1.5 MB per second, depending on how much changes in the picture. Busy scenes cost more than a static background. The live estimate in the converter tells you for your clip.

• Choose simple scenes. Flat colours and a still background compress well; confetti, water and camera shake do not.
• Hold the camera still, or crop to the moving part before converting.
• Avoid long fades and gradients; 256 colours show banding there.
• Text in the frame stays readable at 480–640 px; below that, use bigger captions.
• Loop is on by default. Switch it off for a GIF that should play once and stop on the last frame.

If you control where the clip appears, a short MP4 is usually 5–10 times smaller than the same GIF and has full colour. Many “GIFs” on large platforms are actually videos. Our GIF to MP4 converter does that conversion when someone sends you a heavy GIF. Use a GIF when the destination only accepts images, when you need it to play everywhere with no player, or when it must sit inside a document or an email.

Making GIFs works in mobile browsers too, but phones have far less memory per tab than computers. Keep clips short, use 480 px or less, and convert one GIF at a time. For a long video, cut the part you want first; the converter only reads the section between your start and end times.