Make a GIF From Any Video Clip
A five-second GIF of a UI interaction in your pull request description is worth more than ten paragraphs of explanation. A reaction GIF in Slack hits different. A product demo that loops automatically in an email newsletter gets way more engagement than a “click here to watch” link.
GIFs are everywhere because they just work, every browser, every email client, every messaging app. No video player needed.
You Control the Output
Four settings let you dial in exactly what you want:
- FPS: frames per second. Lower means smaller file. 10 FPS is the sweet spot for most content.
- Width: output width in pixels. 320-480px is ideal for sharing. Going wider makes the file balloon fast.
- Start time: pick where in the video to start capturing.
- Duration: how many seconds of video to turn into the GIF.
The server runs FFmpeg with a palette optimization pass, so the colors look good despite GIF’s 256-color limit.
Steps
- Upload a video (MP4, WebM, MOV, AVI, MKV, whatever).
- Tweak the settings, or just leave the defaults.
- Click Convert to GIF.
- Download.
Want a 3-second reaction GIF from a specific moment? Set start time to that exact second, duration to 3, width to 400, FPS to 10. Done.
Where GIFs Beat Video
GitHub and GitLab issues. You’ve found a bug and want to show the exact behavior. Record your screen, convert the relevant 5 seconds to a GIF, drag it into the issue description. The reviewer sees it immediately without clicking through to a video player. This is how you get bugs fixed fast.
Slack and Teams messages. Drop a GIF instead of trying to describe what’s happening in the UI. “The dropdown flickers when I hover” becomes instantly obvious.
Email newsletters. Most email clients won’t play embedded video. They do display GIFs. A short animation of your new feature captures attention in a way static screenshots can’t.
Documentation and wikis. Confluence, Notion, README files, all of them render GIFs inline. A looping animation of a click sequence is clearer than a numbered list of instructions.
Social media. Twitter, Reddit, Discord, short GIFs get shared. Long videos don’t.
One important thing: GIFs are inherently large compared to video for the same content. A 10-second, full-width GIF can easily hit 20 MB. Keep it short (3-8 seconds), keep it narrow (320-480px), and keep the FPS reasonable (8-12). If your GIF is too big, the GIF to Video converter can turn it into a much smaller MP4. Use the Video Trimmer to isolate the right section before converting.
FAQ
What formats can I convert from? MP4, WebM, MOV, AVI, MKV, anything FFmpeg can decode, which is almost everything.
Why is my GIF 15 MB? GIF is an inefficient format. Long duration, high FPS, or wide dimensions all make it worse. Cut the duration to under 5 seconds, drop FPS to 8-10, and keep width under 480px.
What FPS should I use? 10 for most things. 8 for simple UI demos. 15 if you need smoother motion and don’t mind the file size.
Can I grab just one section of the video? Yes, that’s what the start time and duration fields are for. You don’t have to convert the entire video.
Is there a length limit? Technically no, but anything over 10 seconds will produce a massive file. GIFs are meant to be short and punchy.