Does my MP4 get uploaded anywhere?

No. The MP4 is decoded and the GIF is assembled in your browser. The file never leaves your device, and once the page has loaded the converter works offline.

Why is the GIF much bigger than my MP4?

MP4 uses H.264, which only stores the difference between frames. GIF stores every frame in full as a separate palette image, with no motion compression, so the same clip balloons in size. Shorten the clip, lower the frame rate, and reduce the width to keep the .gif small.

Does the sound in my MP4 carry over?

No. GIF has no audio track, so the H.264 soundtrack is dropped and only the picture frames are kept. If you need the audio, hold on to the original MP4.

Will it open MP4s from my phone or screen recordings?

Usually yes. Phone clips and screen recordings are typically H.264 MP4s, which browsers decode natively. Whether a given file opens depends on the codec inside it and what your browser can decode.

Why does the GIF look grainy or banded compared to the MP4?

Each frame is reduced to at most 256 colors before it goes into the GIF. The MP4 carried far more, so smooth gradients and shadows collapse into visible bands. That is a limit of the GIF format, not your source video.

How long an MP4 can I convert?

There is no fixed length limit, but the frames are held in memory while the GIF is built, so a long or high-resolution MP4 can run your device low on memory. Trimming with the start and end fields keeps it manageable.

MP4 to GIF

Turns an MP4 clip into an animated GIF at the frame rate and width you set. GIF maps everything to 256 colors.

What this does

An MP4 holds H.264 video that uses inter-frame compression: most frames only store what changed since the last one. This decodes that stream back into full pictures, samples them at the frame rate you set, scales each one to your chosen width, and trims the clip to the start and end you pick. Every sampled frame is then reduced to a 256-color palette, which is the most a GIF can store, and the frames are packed into one looping .gif.

Going from MP4 to GIF means giving up that compression: a GIF keeps each frame as its own palette image, with no motion encoding and no audio track. So the .gif comes out far larger than the source MP4, and the H.264 soundtrack is dropped. Smooth gradients may show banding once the colors are cut to 256.

How it works

1Drop your MP4 file here or pick it from your device.
2Set the frame rate and width, and trim with the start and end seconds if you want a shorter clip.
3Click Create GIF, check the looping preview, then download the .gif.

Built with open source

Mediabunny — Converts and edits video and audio in the browser via WebCodecs. Add-on encoders cover MP3, AAC, and FLAC. · MPL-2.0
gifenc — Fast GIF encoding with color quantization. · MIT

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