A GIF is a short, silent loop that plays almost anywhere an image can go: blog posts, emails, chats, product pages and social posts. Turning a few seconds of video into a GIF is the quickest way to show a step, a reaction or a product in motion without asking anyone to press play.
This converter reads your video in the browser, takes the part you choose and encodes it as a GIF. Set where it starts and how long it runs, the width, the shape (the same as the video, a tall pin shape or a square), the frames per second, the speed and the number of colors. The video is never uploaded, and there is no watermark and no sign up.
How to keep a GIF small
A GIF stores every frame as a full picture with at most 256 colors, so files grow fast. Three settings matter most. Length: 3 seconds at 10 frames per second is 30 frames, and 10 seconds is 100. Width: a 320 pixel GIF holds less than half the pixels of a 480 pixel one. Frames per second: 8 to 10 is enough for most clips.
If the file is still too big, drop the colors to 128 or 64, which works well for clips with flat color and less well for skies and skin. Clips with a still camera compress better than shaky ones. The tool shows the finished size so you can compare settings.
GIF or video for Pinterest
For Pinterest, video is the safer format. Pinterest publishes specifications for video pins (MP4, 4 seconds to 5 minutes, 9:16 recommended), but its specification pages do not describe how animated GIFs are treated, and reports differ on whether a GIF plays in the feed. If you post a GIF as a pin, check how it looks on your own account first.
To post the clip as a real video pin, use the Pinterest video resizer, which reshapes it to 9:16 or 2:3 and keeps the sound. GIFs remain a good fit for the blog post or email that the pin links to.
Good uses for a short GIF
Show one step of a recipe or a craft, a before and after, a product turning or changing color, or a few seconds of a tutorial screen. Keep to one idea per GIF, and pick a part where the start and the end look alike so the loop is not jarring.
To build a GIF from photos and not from video, use the GIF maker. To take still frames out of a video for a pin, use the reel frame to pin tool.
