AM GIFs still play in places where video does not: inside most email clients, in product descriptions on marketplaces that strip video embeds, in help docs, in Slack and Discord threads, and in the first frame of a support reply. A 3 second loop of a product being unboxed, a lid snapping shut or a feature being clicked often explains more than a paragraph.
This converter reads your video in the browser, grabs frames at the rate you choose, and encodes them into an animated GIF on your own device. There is no upload, no watermark and no account. Because the work happens on your computer or phone, very long or very wide clips are limited to keep memory use reasonable.
How to convert a video to GIF
- Drop a video into the box, or click it to choose one. MP4, WebM and MOV files work, plus M4V and MKV where your browser can play them.
- Play or scrub the video to the moment you want. Click Start here to set the start time to the current position; the end moves to 5 seconds later if needed. You can also type start and end times in seconds.
- Choose the Width (320, 480, 640 or 800 px, or Original up to 1080 px). Height follows the video's shape.
- Choose Frames per second (5 to 25) and Colors (256, 128, 64 or 32).
- Optional: set Speed (0.5x to 3x), Loop (forever, once, or 3 times), Direction (normal, reverse or boomerang) and a caption of up to 80 characters at the top or bottom.
- Check the output line: it shows the final size in pixels, the number of frames and how long the GIF plays. Click Make GIF.
- Preview the result, check the file size, and click Download GIF. Use Adjust and redo to change settings and try again.
The settings that control quality and file size
GIF is an old format. Each frame is stored as a picture with at most 256 colors, and there is no video-style compression between frames. That is why GIFs get big quickly, and why four settings matter so much.
| Setting | What it changes | Effect on file size |
|---|---|---|
| Width | Pixel dimensions of every frame | The biggest lever. Halving the width cuts the pixels per frame to a quarter. |
| Frames per second | How many frames are captured each second | Roughly proportional. 20 fps makes about twice as many frames as 10 fps. |
| Clip length | Seconds between start and end | Proportional to the number of frames. |
| Colors | Size of each frame's palette | Fewer colors compress better, with more banding in gradients. |
Each frame gets its own optimized palette, which keeps skin tones and product colors closer to the video than a single shared palette would. For screen recordings with flat colors, 64 colors often looks identical to 256. For product photos with soft shadows and gradients, stay at 256.
Speed changes how much video time passes between frames, not the playback rate of each frame. At 2x and 10 fps, the converter grabs a frame every 0.2 seconds of video and plays them at 10 per second, so a 6 second clip plays in about 3 seconds.
Worked examples
A product demo for a Shopify description
A seller has a 1920 x 1080 MP4 of a folding stool opening. They set start 2.0, end 7.0, width 480 px and 10 fps. The output line reads 480 x 270 px, 51 frames, plays for 5.1 s. For a product page, that is sharp enough and usually lands at a size that loads quickly. Pair it with still photos compressed in our image compressor so the page stays fast. If you want a still frame for the product gallery as well, pause the video at the best moment and take a screenshot, then shrink it with the image resizer.
A reaction GIF for a Discord or Slack thread
Width 320 px, 12 fps, 128 colors, 3 seconds, with a bottom caption such as "Restock is live". Captions are drawn in bold white letters with a black outline, sized to about 9% of the height and shrunk to fit the width.
A boomerang loop for Instagram Stories or email
Pick a 1.5 second moment, such as a candle flame or a pour, set Direction to Boomerang and Loop to Forever. The converter plays the frames forward and then back, skipping the repeated end frames so the loop does not stutter. A 1.5 second clip at 12 fps gives 19 frames forward and 36 frames in the boomerang.
A how-to GIF for a help article
Screen recordings of clicks and menus compress very well. Try 640 px, 8 fps and 64 colors. The lower frame rate still shows each step clearly and keeps text crisp.
Output size quick reference
The converter never enlarges a video: if you choose 800 px for a 720 px wide clip, the GIF stays 720 px wide. Height always follows the shape of your video. These are the sizes you get from common phone and camera formats:
| Video shape | Example source | At 320 px | At 480 px | At 640 px |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16:9 landscape | 1920 x 1080 | 320 x 180 | 480 x 270 | 640 x 360 |
| 9:16 vertical | 1080 x 1920 | 320 x 569 | 480 x 853 | 640 x 1138 |
| 1:1 square | 1080 x 1080 | 320 x 320 | 480 x 480 | 640 x 640 |
| 4:3 | 1440 x 1080 | 320 x 240 | 480 x 360 | 640 x 480 |
Frame count is the clip length divided by the time between frames, plus one. A 3 second clip at 10 fps gives 31 frames, 5 seconds at 12 fps gives 61, and 10 seconds at 15 fps gives 151. Vertical videos have many more pixels per frame at the same width, so for Stories-style clips start at 320 or 480 px.
How the converter works
Your browser opens the video file directly from your disk. For each frame, the converter seeks the video to the exact time, waits for the browser to confirm the frame is ready, and draws it onto a canvas at the output size, adding the caption if you typed one. It then builds a palette of up to your chosen number of colors for that frame, maps every pixel to the nearest palette color, and hands the frame to gifenc, a small open source GIF encoder, with the delay and loop settings. Reverse mode reads the frames in reverse order, and boomerang stores each frame so it can write them again backwards at the end.
Because every frame is a seek and a redraw, conversion speed depends on your device and the video codec. A few seconds of 480 px video usually takes a few seconds on a laptop. The progress bar shows each frame, and Cancel stops the job at any point.
Filming clips that make good GIFs
- Keep the camera still. Use a tripod or lean the phone on something. A steady background compresses far better than a shaky one.
- Film against a plain background with even light, so the colors of the product get most of the 256 color palette.
- Show one action per GIF: a lid opening, a strap adjusting, a button being pressed. Three to five seconds is plenty.
- Start and end on a similar frame if the GIF will loop, or use Boomerang so the loop point is invisible.
- Record a few seconds extra on each side and trim here with Start here and the end time.
File size limits where GIFs are used
When a GIF finishes, the result panel shows its file size and turns red above 8 MB, with a hint to lower width, frames per second or colors. Limits change, so check the platform you post to. A few current ones worth knowing:
- Discord: the free upload limit is 20 MB since August 2026, raised from 10 MB.
- Email: large GIFs slow down the whole message. Keep email GIFs small, put the key message in the first frame, and remember that some Outlook setups on Windows show only the first frame when animations are turned off in Windows.
- Shopify: product media accepts GIF files, including animated ones, under 20 MB. Smaller is still better for page speed.
- Etsy: Etsy's listing photo guidance says animated GIFs are not supported as listing images, so upload a short video to the listing instead.
For Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, upload the original video, not a GIF. Those apps are built for video, and a GIF only lowers the quality.
Where a GIF beats a video, and where it does not
Use a GIF when the place you post does not play video inline, when you want a silent loop that starts on its own, or when the animation is only a few seconds long. Use video when the clip is longer than about 10 seconds, needs sound, or has lots of fine detail and movement: an MP4 of the same clip is usually many times smaller than the GIF.
For creators, short GIFs also make good previews in newsletters that link to a full YouTube video. If you publish on YouTube, AM Jarvis YouTube Studio helps plan titles, descriptions and tags from real YouTube searches, and our free YouTube description generator covers the text side.
Troubleshooting
"Your browser could not play this video"
The converter can only read videos your browser can play. iPhone clips recorded in HEVC (H.265) often fail in Chrome on Windows and Linux. Open the clip in Safari or Edge, or export it as MP4 with H.264 first (on iPhone, Settings > Camera > Formats > Most Compatible records new videos in H.264).
The Make GIF button is grayed out
Read the output line. The end time must be after the start, the clip must be 30 seconds or less, and the total frames must stay at or under 450. At 25 fps that means just under 18 seconds; at 10 fps you can use the full 30.
The GIF is too big
Lower the width first (640 to 480 px roughly halves the pixels), then the frames per second, then the colors. Trimming a second or two off the ends also helps.
The colors look blotchy
That is the 256 color limit of GIF showing up on gradients. Go back to 256 colors, reduce width a little instead, and avoid clips with smooth sky or soft studio backdrops if color accuracy matters.
It is slow or the tab crashes on my phone
Every frame is held in memory while the GIF is encoded. Use a smaller width, fewer frames per second or a shorter clip, and close other tabs. On a laptop, the same clip will convert much faster.
The caption is tiny or cut short
Captions shrink until they fit 92% of the GIF width. A long caption on a 320 px GIF can end up very small. Keep captions to a few words, or choose a wider output.
The GIF plays at a slightly different speed
GIF timing is stored in hundredths of a second, so rates such as 15 or 25 fps are rounded by viewers. The difference is small and usually not visible.