How to make a GIF from a video

Step by step

1. Open Video to GIF. Go to the Video to GIF tool. The first visit downloads the FFmpeg engine, about 30 MB, which is cached afterwards.
2. Drop the video in. Drag an MP4, MOV or WebM onto the drop zone. A preview appears so you can find the moment you want.
3. Set Start and Duration. Type the Start time as hh:mm:ss or seconds, then set Duration between 0.5 and 30 seconds. Shorter is better; most good GIFs are 2 to 6 seconds.
4. Choose Frame rate and Width. Pick 12 fps and 480 px for a general-purpose GIF. Use 8 fps (smallest) for a reaction clip, 24 fps (smoothest) only when motion matters and size does not.
5. Click Make GIF. Kilnfile runs a two-pass encode: the first pass builds a palette of the 256 best colours for your clip, the second applies it. A 5 second clip takes a few seconds.
6. Download and check the size. Click Download. If the file is bigger than you want, shorten the Duration, drop the frame rate or reduce the width and make it again.

What makes a GIF file big?

Three things multiply together: how many frames there are (duration times frame rate), how many pixels each frame has (width times height) and how much changes between frames. GIF has no real video compression; each frame is stored as an indexed image, so a 10 second clip at 24 fps is 240 pictures. Halving the duration, the frame rate or the width each roughly halves the file. Camera shake and film grain also hurt, because every pixel changes every frame.

How big will my GIF be?

As a rule of thumb, roughly 1 to 3 MB per 5 seconds at 480 px and 12 fps, with a steady screen recording at the low end and handheld footage at the high end. The table gives measured sizes for a single 5 second clip at each combination of Kilnfile's options.

What are the GIF size limits on Slack, X and websites?

X (Twitter) accepts GIFs up to 15 MB from the web. Slack allows files up to 128 MB but previews animate only for smaller files, and a 20 MB GIF in a busy channel is unpopular. Most websites and content management systems recommend keeping a GIF under 5 MB, because every visitor downloads the whole thing before it plays. Email is the strictest: a GIF in a newsletter should be under 1 MB. Kilnfile's defaults of 480 px and 12 fps for 5 seconds land comfortably inside all of these.

Why does the GIF look grainy or have odd colours?

GIF is limited to 256 colours per frame, so a sunset or a gradient has to be approximated. Kilnfile's two-pass palette chooses the best 256 colours for your specific clip rather than a generic set, which is why its output looks cleaner than a single-pass converter, but a smooth gradient will still show faint banding. Dithering spreads the error as fine noise, which looks more natural but costs file size. Clips with flat colours, such as screen recordings and animations, come out looking almost identical to the source.

Should I use a GIF or a short MP4?

If the destination supports video, a short MP4 is ten to twenty times smaller than a GIF of the same clip and looks better. Slack, X, WhatsApp and most website builders all play a muted, looping MP4. GIF still wins where only images are allowed: email newsletters, GitHub README files, some forums, and platforms that strip video. Use Trim Video to make the short MP4 and Compress Video to keep it small.

Frequently asked questions