Turn a video clip into a GIF

Worked example

GIF holds only 256 colours per frame, so the palette matters more than any other setting.

A GIF holds 256 colours per frame, so the palette is everything. This runs two passes — one to compute the best palette for your clip, one to apply it:

The equivalent command

ffmpeg -ss 5 -i holiday-clip.mp4 -t 4 -vf fps=12,scale=480:-2:flags=lanczos,palettegen -y palette.png && \
  ffmpeg -ss 5 -i holiday-clip.mp4 -i palette.png -t 4 -lavfi 'fps=12,scale=480:-2:flags=lanczos[x];[x][1:v]paletteuse=dither=bayer:bayer_scale=5' -an -loop 0 -y out-holiday-clip.gif

This is exactly what runs in the browser. Copy it to run the same job locally on a file too large for a tab.

A single-pass GIF export uses a fixed web palette and bands badly on anything with a gradient. The extra pass costs a few seconds and is the difference between usable and not.

Why it matters

A single-pass GIF export picks a fixed, generic palette and bands visibly on anything with a gradient — a sky, a face, a fade. Running a first pass to compute the best 256 colours for your specific clip, then a second to apply them with dithering, costs a few extra seconds and transforms the result. That two-pass chain is what this tool does by default.

What this needs

A 30.7 MB FFmpeg download, cached by your browser after the first time. Nothing is downloaded until you click.