Convert MP4 to GIF

MP4 to GIF: how it works

Takes an MP4 — the format most phones and cameras record in — lets you pick the exact moment and length, and renders an animated GIF with a high-quality colour palette. It uses the same in-browser FFmpeg (WASM) two-pass palette pipeline as the Video tab.

Input

MP4 (H.264 and similar)

Engine

FFmpeg (WASM), 2-pass palette

Recommended

12–15 fps, ~480 px width

Length

A few seconds is ideal

Audio

Not kept (GIF is silent)

First run

Slower (engine loads once, then cached)

What to know about the GIF format here

MP4 (usually H.264) is heavily compressed and keeps full colour, whereas a GIF re-expands every frame to a whole 256-colour image, so the GIF is almost always several times larger than the MP4 it came from.

Tips for the best result

• Most phone-shot MP4s convert well at 12–15 fps and a width near 480 px; raise either only when you specifically need it, because both multiply the file size.
• Trim to just the seconds you need before converting — a 3-second cut makes a far lighter GIF than the whole clip.
• MP4 audio is discarded because GIFs are silent by design; if sound matters, a muted MP4 or WebM loop is the better share.
• The FFmpeg engine downloads once (about 30 MB) and is cached by your browser, so the first MP4 you convert takes longer to start than later ones.

When to use this

Reach for this when your source is specifically an MP4 (a screen recording, a phone video, a downloaded clip) and you want a short looping GIF of one moment from it.

How GIF files behave

• A GIF stores up to 256 colours per frame from a palette it picks for that frame, so flat graphics, logos, line art, and screen recordings reproduce cleanly, while photographic gradients and skin tones can band or dither.
• GIF compression (LZW) is lossless per frame — it never adds JPEG-style blocky artefacts — but because every frame is essentially a full image, the file grows quickly with more frames, more pixels, and more colours.
• Animation timing is stored as a per-frame delay in hundredths of a second, and looping is set by a small repeat marker (the Netscape extension), which is why a GIF can loop forever on its own with no player controls.
• A GIF has no audio track and no real alpha blending — only a single fully-transparent colour — so it is built for short, silent, looping motion rather than full video; a muted MP4 or WebM is far smaller for anything longer than a few seconds.