Pick a start and up to 15 seconds of an MP4, MOV or WebM video, choose frames per second and width, and save an animated GIF.
To convert a video to a GIF, this tool takes a start time and a length of up to 15 seconds, captures still frames at the frame rate you choose, reduces each frame to 256 colours and joins them into an animated GIF. A hidden copy of the video is moved to each frame time, which is the start plus the frame number divided by the frame rate. The frame is drawn onto a canvas at the width you chose, and the GIF encoder from the GIF Maker tool writes it. A worked example: 5 seconds at 10 frames per second is 50 frames, taken at 0, 0.1, 0.2 and so on up to 4.9 seconds. From a 1280 by 720 video at a width of 320 px each frame is 320 by 180 px, so the job is 50 times 57,600, or 2.9 million pixels. The video plays nowhere and no sound is kept, because a GIF has no audio.
A GIF stores the pause after each frame in whole hundredths of a second, as the GIF89a specification defines it. Ten frames per second is 10 hundredths a frame and 20 is 5, so both are exact. Fifteen frames per second would be 6.67 hundredths, which cannot be written. Rounding every frame to 7 would make the GIF play about 5 percent slow, so the tool spreads the delays instead: 7, 6, 7, 7, 6, 7 and so on, and 15 frames add up to exactly 100 hundredths, one second. The same method keeps 8 and 12 frames per second on time. You can choose 5, 8, 10, 12, 15 or 20 frames per second, and a clip is limited to 300 frames, which is 15 seconds at 20.
A GIF is roughly as big as the number of frames times the pixels in each frame, so width matters most. Halving the width cuts the pixels to a quarter: a 320 by 180 frame has 57,600 pixels and a 160 by 90 frame has 14,400. Frame rate comes next, since 20 frames per second has twice the frames of 10. The size of the finished file is not known in advance because it depends on the picture, so the page shows the bytes built so far while it works, and after 3 frames it projects the final size as the average so far times the number of frames. The tool stops with a message if a GIF would pass 50 MB. Dither smooths gradients but makes the file larger, and a GIF frame can hold at most 256 colours, so photos and video can look grainy.
Whether a video opens depends on your browser and the codecs inside the file, not on the extension. MP4, MOV and WebM files are the most likely to work, and MKV, AVI or WMV files often do not. One video at a time is made into one GIF. There is no cropping, no text, no speed change and no clip from the middle of two videos. Frames are captured by moving to a time in the video, so the browser may show the frame nearest that time rather than the exact one. The preview is for choosing the start: pause it and press the button to use its position as the start.
Add an MP4, MOV or WebM file, set the start and a length of up to 15 seconds, choose frames per second and a width, then press Make GIF. A 5 second clip at 10 frames per second and 320 px wide is 50 frames.
Up to 15 seconds and 300 frames. At 20 frames per second that is exactly 15 seconds, at 10 frames per second 150 frames. The start can be anywhere in the video, and the clip cannot run past its end.
Size follows frames times pixels. Going from 640 px to 320 px wide cuts the pixels to a quarter, and 20 frames per second has twice the frames of 10. Turn Dither off, shorten the clip, or lower the width. The tool refuses a GIF over 50 MB.
The default is 10 frames per second. Lower rates give smaller, choppier GIFs, and 15 or 20 give smoother ones with 1.5 or 2 times as many frames as 10 for the same clip. Because GIF delays are in hundredths of a second, 15 fps is spread as 7 and 6 hundredths to stay on time.
The browser could not play it. The container, such as MP4, MOV or WebM, and the video codec inside both have to be ones your browser supports. Try Chrome or Edge, or a different file. A damaged file also fails.
No. The video is read in your browser from the file you picked, the frames are drawn and encoded in this tab, and nothing is sent to a server. The page counts visits with Google Analytics, never your video, its name or its size.