GIFs
Make one from a video, shrink one that is too big, or turn one back into video.
- Compress a GIFThree levers, each giving up something different, with the numbers for choosing between them.
- Convert a GIF to MP4The same animation as video, at a fraction of the bytes.
- Convert a video to GIFTake a few seconds of footage and get back a looping GIF.
About these tools
GIF is a poor way to store video and the only way to post one in a great many places. The format dates from 1987 and was designed for flat graphics: 256 colours per frame chosen from a palette, LZW compression that rewards long runs of the same pixel, and no concept of predicting one frame from the last. A second of camera footage in GIF is routinely twenty times the size of the same second in MP4.
That gap is the whole design problem on these pages. Every lever that makes a GIF smaller takes something away, and which one to give up depends on the clip. Fewer frames per second is invisible on a slow pan and ruins a fast one. A smaller palette is free on a screen recording of flat interface colours and posterises a face. Half the width costs half of everything and is usually the first thing to try.
So the controls are the trade rather than a quality slider, and each page says which lever suits which footage. Going the other way, back to MP4, is worth doing whenever the destination allows it: the same animation as video is smaller, plays with the same loop, and stops being a wall of dithered pixels.