Length—
Frames—
GIF—
Against video—
A GIF is a 1987 format with 256 colours and no real interframe compression, and it survives because it autoplays, loops, and pastes into places that will not take a video. The cost is enormous and no converter states it: on the sample here, five seconds at 480 pixels wide comes to 460 KB as a GIF and 50 KB as an MP4 — nine times larger, and it looks worse. So this tool makes both. It gives you the GIF you came for and writes the same seconds as a video beside it, with the two sizes next to each other, because that comparison is the thing that actually changes what you do.
Step by step
01Open the clip
The selection opens on the first five seconds rather than the whole file — a GIF of a two-minute video is never what anyone wanted, and making one before you can stop it is worse.
02Choose the seconds
Drag the handles on the rail. Shorter is the single most effective thing you can do to the file size, and it is usually free — most of a clip is not the part worth looping.
03Set width, then frame rate
Those are the two levers that matter, in that order. The preview is the real GIF looping in the page, so the palette and the cadence you see are what the file contains.
04Look at what it costs
The ledger shows the GIF against the same seconds written as a video. If nothing in the situation actually requires a GIF, that number is the answer.
A worked conversion
The sample clip this tool opens with: ten seconds of 640×360 video generated in the browser, of which the first five are taken. Every figure is what the tool reports.
Given
The same five seconds, four ways
GIF 480 × 270 12 fps 460 KB 9× the MP4
GIF 240 × 136 12 fps 193 KB 4× the MP4
MP4 640 × 360 25 fps 50 KB with every colour
halving the width: 460 KB → 193 KB (−58%)Nine times the size, a quarter of the frame rate, and 256 colours against sixteen million. There is no dimension on which the GIF is better, which is why the only good reason to make one is that the destination will not play a video — an email client, a README, a chat that refuses to embed. The lever worth knowing is width: halving it took this file from 460 KB to 193 KB, a 58% saving, because a GIF's size tracks its pixel count almost directly. That is a far bigger effect than the frame rate and a far, far bigger one than the colour count, which is why there is no colour control here: dropping from 256 to 128 colours saves a few percent and visibly damages the image.
Before you make one
256 colours, per frame, maximum
The format stores a palette of at most 256 entries and an index per pixel. Everything else — the sixteen million colours a video frame can contain — is thrown away by the quantiser, which is why gradients band and skin tones go blotchy. No setting fixes this; it is the format.
Every frame is stored nearly whole
Video codecs store the difference between frames, which is where almost all of their compression comes from. GIF has only within-frame compression, so a hundred frames cost roughly a hundred images. That single fact accounts for the entire size difference.
Width is the strongest lever
Size tracks the pixel count, so halving the width removes about three quarters of the pixels — on the sample here it took the file from 460 KB to 193 KB. Frame rate is the second lever, length the third, and colour count a distant and damaging fourth.
One palette for the whole animation, not one per frame
Per-frame palettes are marginally better on a clip whose colours change completely, and they cost a palette each in the file and produce visible flashing as they switch. Quantising once from frames sampled across the clip is what makes a GIF of a talking head or a screen recording come out clean.
Frame delays are in hundredths of a second
So 10, 12.5, 20 and 25 frames per second are exact and everything else is approximated — and browsers historically clamped anything faster than 50 fps to 10. A GIF cannot be relied on to play at a rate that does not divide 100 evenly.
Use one only where a video will not play
Email clients, README files, wikis, and chat tools that will not embed video are real constraints, and a GIF solves them. Everywhere else — a web page, a social post, a message app — a muted looping video is smaller, sharper, and supported.
The judgement call
Where it is going decides it, and the size comparison makes the trade visible.
Into an email or a newsletter
GIF
Email clients do not play video. This is the case the format still exists for.
Into a README or a wiki
GIF
Most render an animated image inline and will not embed a video file. Keep the width down; nobody reads a README at full width.
On a web page you control
A muted looping video
An autoplaying muted video with loop and playsinline behaves identically and is a fraction of the size — on the sample here, a ninth.
A social post
Upload the video
Every major platform converts an uploaded GIF to video on its own servers anyway, so uploading one only means uploading nine times the bytes.
A long clip
Trim it first
Length multiplies everything. A GIF is a loop of a moment; if it needs a beginning and an end, it wanted to be a video.
Fine detail or text on screen
Not a GIF
256 colours and the quantisation that gets there make small text and gradients visibly worse. A screenshot or a video keeps them.
Reference
FAQ
Because a GIF stores every frame nearly whole, while a video codec stores only the difference between frames — which is where almost all of a video's compression comes from. On the sample in the Tinapps video to GIF tool, five seconds is 460 KB as a GIF and 50 KB as an MP4: nine times the size, at a quarter of the frame rate and with 256 colours instead of sixteen million.
Reduce the width first, then the frame rate, then the length. A GIF's size tracks its pixel count, so halving the width removes about three quarters of the pixels — on the sample in the Tinapps video to GIF tool that takes the file from 460 KB to 193 KB. Reducing the colour count is the one lever not worth pulling: it saves a few percent and visibly damages the image.
10 or 12.5 fps for most things. GIF stores frame delays in hundredths of a second, so only rates that divide 100 evenly — 10, 12.5, 20, 25 — play exactly as intended, and everything else is approximated by the player. Higher rates multiply the file size for motion smoothness that the format's other limits undermine anyway.
A video, unless the destination will not play one. Email clients, README files, and some wikis genuinely cannot, and that is what GIF still exists for. Everywhere else a muted looping video is smaller, sharper, and universally supported — and every major social platform converts an uploaded GIF to video on its own servers regardless.
Yes. The Tinapps video to GIF tool decodes the frames with your browser's own video codecs, resizes and quantises them in the page, and encodes the GIF locally — so the clip never leaves the device and there is no length cap, no queue, and no watermark burned into the corner.
Because the format holds at most 256 colours per frame, and a video frame can contain millions. The quantiser has to choose which 256 to keep, so gradients band and skin tones go blotchy. Nothing in any converter fixes this — it is the format, and it is a reason to prefer a video wherever one will play.
There is no limit in the format, but there is one in practice: every frame is stored nearly whole, so a 30-second GIF is roughly six times the size of a 5-second one. The Tinapps video to GIF tool holds up to 400 frames in memory and samples longer selections down rather than filling the tab, which at 12 fps is about 33 seconds.
Yes, unavoidably and in three ways at once: the colours are reduced to 256, the frame rate is usually lowered, and the frames are normally scaled down to keep the file manageable. That is the trade a GIF is, which is why the Tinapps video to GIF tool shows the same clip's size as a video next to it.
Frames are decoded, resized, quantised, and encoded entirely in your browser. The clip is never uploaded, and the GIF exists only as the file you download.
Keep going
Trim video
Shorten the clip first — length multiplies everything a GIF costs.
Mute video
If a muted looping video will do, this is the smaller answer.
Image compressor
For a still frame rather than a loop.
Video and audio tools
The rest of the category, all on the browser's own codecs.