Utilore

Video to GIF

Drop in a clip, drag the strip to the part you want, and press the button. The estimated weight and time are shown before you start, because a GIF that turns out to be forty megabytes is a GIF you cannot send anywhere.

or drop them here

A video — MP4, MOV, WebM and more, up to 300 MB

Minutes and seconds, like 1:30

    The GIF is built in two passes: the first collects a palette for exactly this piece, the second draws the frames with it. The extra pass costs seconds and saves the sky from turning into stripes — GIF holds 256 colours per frame, and the default palette is not built for your clip. Nothing is uploaded: the video is decoded and rebuilt on your own device.

    How to use

    1. Drop a video onto the area below, or press «Select file» — up to 300 MB.
    2. Drag the edges of the strip to the piece you want; the play button previews exactly that piece.
    3. Pick the width and frames per second, then press «Make the GIF» and download it.

    Good to know

    Why the GIF is built twice

    A GIF holds 256 colours per frame — the format is from 1987 and that is not going to change. If those 256 are the generic web-safe set, an evening sky turns into stripes and skin turns green. So the first pass looks through your piece and builds a palette from the colours that are actually in it; the second pass draws the frames using that palette. The extra pass costs seconds and is the difference between a GIF worth sending and one worth deleting.

    Where the limits come from

    GIF has no real compression between frames: every frame is stored nearly whole. Ten seconds at 640 pixels and 15 frames per second is around thirty megabytes, and most chats and forums refuse it outright. That is why the length is capped, the widths on offer stop at 640, and the estimate is shown before the button rather than after — a warning that arrives at the end of a three-minute wait is not a warning.

    Frequently asked questions

    Why does my GIF have no sound?

    Because no GIF does. The format has no audio track at all — what you see on social networks with sound is usually a video file being displayed like a GIF. If you need the sound, convert the clip to MP4 or WebM instead.

    Can I make a longer one?

    Not here. Past fifteen seconds the file grows past what a chat will accept, and a GIF nobody can send is not a result. For anything longer, a short video is both smaller and sharper.

    The GIF looks worse than the video. Is something broken?

    No — that is the format. Two hundred and fifty-six colours per frame is a hard ceiling, and the picture is also scaled down to keep the file sendable. Choosing a smaller width and fewer frames per second makes the file smaller but not sharper; if you want sharp, keep it a video.

    Is my video uploaded anywhere?

    No. The engine runs inside your browser, so the clip is decoded and rebuilt on your own device. Nothing is sent, which matters for the sort of clip people usually cut GIFs from.

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