GIF To Video

What GIF To Video does

GIF To Video converts an animated GIF into an MP4 video file. There are no settings: the picture and frames stay as they are and only the format changes. To alter the GIF itself, GIF Resizer sets its dimensions and GIF Optimizer reduces its size.

An MP4 is handy for sites, chat apps, and editors that take video uploads rather than images. The file is written with its index at the front, so playback can begin before the whole video has loaded.

How to use it

1. Select Choose File and open the animated GIF. Conversion starts on its own a moment later.
2. Follow the progress bar while the frames are encoded.
3. Play the result in Output Preview, which has player controls and starts muted.
4. Select Download Video to save the .mp4, or Clear to start again with a different GIF.

Formats and limits

• Input: GIF files only, picked through a .gif filter.
• Output: an .mp4 with the same base name as the GIF, so cat.gif becomes cat.mp4.
• Frames are stored in the yuv420p pixel format, the layout most video players expect.
• There is no audio track, because GIFs carry no sound.
• Transparency is not kept. MP4 video has no alpha channel, so see-through areas become solid.
• No length or size limit is enforced. Encoding happens on one thread of your processor, so a long or large GIF takes a while to finish, and the very first conversion also waits for the engine to load.

Further reading

• Make a GIF smaller - Cut unnecessary frames, reduce dimensions, and compare motion and colors before sending a GIF.

Privacy

The conversion is performed by FFmpeg running as WebAssembly in this tab. Its engine files are downloaded on first use from the jsDelivr CDN, or from this site if the CDN cannot be reached, while the GIF and the finished MP4 stay on your computer, held in page memory until you download or clear them.

FAQ

Will the video loop like the GIF did?

An MP4 does not loop by itself. Looping is up to the player; on a web page, add the loop attribute to the video element.

Is the MP4 smaller than the GIF?

Usually, because video encoding stores the changes between frames far more efficiently than GIF does. Output size under the preview shows the figure for your file.

Why is my video one pixel narrower or shorter?

The yuv420p format needs even dimensions, so an odd width or height is rounded down by one pixel. Nothing else is cropped.

Why do thin colored lines look softer in the video?

The yuv420p format keeps color detail at half the resolution of brightness detail. Pixel art and small colored text show this most.

Can I pick the resolution or quality?

Not in this tool. Resize the GIF with GIF Resizer before converting, or shrink the MP4 afterwards with Video Optimizer.

Related tools

• Video To GIF - go the other way and turn a video into a GIF.
• Video Optimizer - shrink the MP4 after converting.
• Video Converter - re-encode the finished MP4 as WebM.
• Video Loop - repeat the MP4 so a short loop plays longer.
• Animated Image Converter - turn a GIF into an animated WebP or APNG instead.