Rescreen / Free tools / MP4 to GIF

MP4 to GIF converter

Drop an MP4 here and get a looping GIF in seconds, in 256 colours a frame.

Drop an MP4 file here

or choose one from your device

Up to 2.0 GB. Stays on your device.

How to convert MP4 to GIF

Three steps, all on this page.

Choose your MP4
Choose or drop an MP4 file. The page reads what is inside and checks that this browser can convert it before anything starts.
Convert to GIF
Pick the options you want, then press Convert to GIF. Tracks that a GIF can hold as they are get copied, which is near instant.
Check and download
The new file is opened again and checked against the original before it is offered. Play it in the preview, then download it.

What changes from MP4 to GIF

A GIF stores each frame as up to 256 colours picked from a palette. Anything with more colours than that, such as a face, a sky or a gradient, is approximated with dithering. Source
GIF compression itself is lossless (LZW). The loss in an MP4 to GIF conversion comes from cutting the colours to a palette and from dropping frames, not from the compression. Source
An animated GIF is a first full frame followed by only the parts that change in each frame after it, and one palette colour can be marked fully transparent so the frame underneath shows through. Source
An MP4 with H.264 video plays in every major browser, and a muted, looping video (<video autoplay loop muted playsinline>) does the same job as a GIF on a web page. In Google’s own example a 3.7 MB GIF was 551 KB as an MP4. Source
GitHub issues, pull requests and comments take both: GIFs up to 10 MB, and MP4, MOV or WebM videos up to 10 MB on a free plan or 100 MB on a paid one. Source

MP4 file

MP4 (ISO base media)

PictureH.264 or HEVC
SoundAAC

GIF file

GIF

Picture256-colour frames, looping
Soundnone

Who converts MP4 to GIF

People who need a clip to move where a video will not: a product demo in a GitHub README, a bug report that shows the click that breaks, a step in a help article, a reaction in a chat, a few seconds of an email. Most of these MP4s are screen recordings, which make small, sharp GIFs. The rest are phone or webcam footage, which make big ones, and the settings below are about telling the two apart before you wait for the result.

Settings for screen recordings and camera footage

What is in the MP4 decides the size of the GIF far more than how long it is. This page draws only the pixels that changed since the last frame. In a screen recording most of the screen sits still while the cursor moves and a few words appear, so each frame adds very little. In camera footage every pixel shifts a little in every frame, from light, noise and the person moving, so every frame is drawn in full.

We converted the same 10 seconds of a 1080p screen recording and of 1080p webcam footage on this page at five settings. The screen recording stayed under 300 KB even at 960 pixels wide. The webcam clip was 2.4 MB at the smallest setting and 8.9 MB at the largest, close to GitHub’s 10 MB limit for a GIF.

Screen recordings: 800 or 960 pixels wide, so text stays readable, at 10 frames a second. Go to 15 only if the cursor’s path matters; it adds little because still frames are skipped.
Camera footage: 480 pixels wide at 10 frames a second, and keep it to a few seconds. Every extra second adds about as much as the first.
Over a size limit: lower the width first. Halving the width cuts the pixels to a quarter, which shrinks the file far more than lowering the frame rate does.

Width and frame rate	Screen recording	Camera footage
480 px, 10 fps	101 KB in 0.6 s	2.4 MB in 1.4 s
640 px, 10 fps	146 KB in 0.6 s	3.9 MB in 1.8 s
640 px, 15 fps	192 KB in 0.8 s	5.4 MB in 2.5 s
800 px, 10 fps	199 KB in 0.9 s	6.0 MB in 2.6 s
960 px, 10 fps	259 KB in 0.9 s	8.9 MB in 3.4 s

Ten seconds from each 1080p H.264 MP4, converted on this page in Chrome 155 on an M1 MacBook Pro, with the time each took. The 10 seconds of MP4 were 315 KB (screen) and 15.2 MB (camera).

When an MP4 is better than a GIF

Whenever the place you are sending it plays video. At the same 640 pixels, our 10-second webcam clip was 3.9 MB as a GIF and 0.64 MB as an H.264 MP4: a sixth of the size, in full colour. The screen recording was 146 KB as a GIF and 66 KB as an MP4. An MP4 can also keep its sound, which a GIF cannot hold at all.

Slack, X, LinkedIn, Notion and most websites play MP4 inline and on a loop, so a GIF there costs size and colour for nothing. On a web page you build yourself, a muted looping <video> element behaves exactly like a GIF.

A GIF still wins where only images go: a README or other Markdown file, an email, a docs tool or a forum that takes images but not video. It plays everywhere an image shows, with no play button and no player.

What happens to the sound and the length

The sound is left out, because a GIF has nowhere to put it. If the clip needs its sound, keep it as an MP4; the video trimmer will cut it down to the part you want without re-encoding.

A GIF from this page can be up to 30 seconds long and 1,280 pixels wide. Set the start and end, to a tenth of a second, to choose the part; to crop the picture as well, use the video to GIF maker. Past 30 seconds a GIF gets too big to be useful for anything, and an MP4 is the right file.

When not to convert

Do not convert to make a clip smaller. A GIF is almost always larger than the MP4 it came from at the same size on screen; if the MP4 is too big to send, the video compressor is the tool for that.

A GIF cannot improve the picture. It has fewer colours than the MP4, so skin, skies and gradients band or speckle, and a 30 fps video at 10 frames a second looks less smooth. Keep the original MP4 and make a new GIF from it whenever you need different settings, rather than converting a GIF again.

Other ways to convert MP4 to GIF

Gifski Mac, Windows or Linux

Install Gifski from gif.ski (a Mac App Store app, a Windows installer, or a command-line tool).
In the app, drop the MP4 on the window, set the width, frame rate and quality, and save.
From the command line: gifski --fps 10 --width 640 -o out.gif input.mp4.

Gifski uses thousands of colours per frame with clever dithering, so camera footage looks noticeably better than in most converters, including this one. The files are larger for it. Free and open source.

ffmpeg Any computer, from the command line

Install ffmpeg (on a Mac with Homebrew: brew install ffmpeg; on Windows: winget install Gyan.FFmpeg).
Run ffmpeg -ss 5 -t 10 -i input.mp4 -vf "fps=10,scale=640:-1:flags=lanczos,split[a][b];[a]palettegen[p];[b][p]paletteuse" output.gif to make a 10-second GIF starting 5 seconds in.
For a screen recording, use palettegen=stats_mode=diff so the palette is spent on the parts that move.

The palettegen and paletteuse pair builds one palette for the whole clip, which avoids the flicker of a fresh palette every frame. Without it, ffmpeg uses a generic palette and the GIF looks blotchy.

Photoshop Mac or Windows

Choose File › Import › Video Frames to Layers, pick the MP4 and limit it to the part you want (and every 2nd or 3rd frame).
In the Timeline panel menu, choose Make Frames From Layers, and set the loop menu to Forever.
Choose File › Export › Save for Web (Legacy), pick GIF, set the colours and the image size, and save.

The most control over every frame, and the right choice if you want to edit or caption frames. Slow for anything long, and a paid app.

Frequently asked questions

How do you convert MP4 to GIF?

Drop the MP4 on the converter at the top of this page, choose the width, frame rate, start and end, then press Convert to GIF. It runs in your browser, so a 10-second clip takes a few seconds and nothing is uploaded. Gifski, ffmpeg and Photoshop can do it too; the steps are above.

What is better, MP4 or GIF?

MP4, wherever video plays: it is a fraction of the size, keeps full colour and can carry sound. GIF is better only where images go but video does not, such as a README, an email or a forum that takes images.

How do I make a high-resolution GIF from an MP4?

Choose a larger width (up to 1,280 pixels) and keep the clip short. A screen recording stays small even at 960 pixels; camera footage grows fast, so pick a few seconds. For the best colour on camera footage, Gifski does more than any browser converter.

Why is my GIF so much bigger than the MP4?

Because a GIF stores frames far less efficiently than H.264 does. Camera footage is the worst case: every pixel changes every frame, so every frame is stored in full. Make it narrower, use 10 frames a second or fewer, and shorten it.

Does the GIF keep the sound?

No. GIF is an image format and has no sound track, so the sound is dropped. Keep the clip as an MP4 if it needs sound.

Is it free, and is there a watermark?

It is free, with no sign-up and no watermark. The GIF is made on your own computer and saved straight to your downloads.

Is my file uploaded?

No. Your MP4 is read, converted and checked on your own computer, so there is no upload and no queue. In Chrome and Edge on a computer files of any size work, written straight to a file you choose; in other browsers, files up to 2.0 GB. We count anonymous page views and whether a conversion worked; when one fails, the event also carries the step, your browser’s error and the file’s codecs, size and length in broad bands, never the file or its name. If a conversion fails you can choose to send us the file, which is deleted within 30 days. See the privacy policy.

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