GIF to MP4 (GIF to Video) Converter
Turn a GIF into an MP4 that keeps every frame’s timing. Smaller file, plays anywhere, made on your device.
Your MP4
How to convert a GIF to MP4
- Drop your GIF on the frame above or press Choose file. You’ll see its size, frame count and length right away.
- If the GIF has transparent areas, choose what goes behind them: white, black or a custom color.
- Set Repeat if you want the animation to play more than once in the video.
- Press Convert to MP4, then Download MP4. The file keeps your GIF’s name.
Why MP4 is smaller
A GIF stores every frame as its own picture, squeezed with a compression method from 1987. The best it can do between frames is skip pixels that didn’t change. H.264 video predicts each frame from the ones around it, so a person turning their head costs a sliver of what a whole new picture would.
How much you save depends on what’s in the GIF. We converted three and the spread surprised us:
| GIF | GIF size | MP4 size | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio product clip, 5 s, 480 × 854 | 5.1 MB | 487 KB | 10× smaller |
| Meme-style test clip (still background, moving shape, caption), 5 s, 480 × 270 | 176 KB | 110 KB | 1.6× smaller |
| Concert phone clip saved at Small quality, 10 s, 480 × 854 | 5.2 MB | 3.5 MB | 1.5× smaller |
Clean footage shrinks a lot. The concert GIF barely did, and the reason is dithering: to fake smooth shades with 256 colors, the GIF is full of fine speckle, and a video encoder treats speckle as detail it has to keep. A GIF that was made from a video in the first place usually converts well. A heavily dithered or very noisy one, less so.
Timing and transparency
Lots of GIFs don’t run at a steady frame rate. A reaction GIF might hold the punchline frame for a full second and flick through the rest at 8 hundredths each. Converters that pick one frame rate for the whole video flatten that, and the timing feels off. This one gives every frame in the MP4 the exact duration it had in the GIF. We checked the output frame by frame: a 12 fps GIF alternates 8 and 9 hundredths, and so does the MP4.
Transparency is where GIF and MP4 really differ. A GIF pixel can be see-through; an MP4 pixel can’t. So you choose the color that fills those areas. The preview shows transparent parts over a checkerboard, so you can tell whether your GIF has any before you pick.
Odd sizes get one extra row or column, because H.264 needs even width and height: a 245 × 199 GIF becomes a 246 × 200 video. And since H.264 stores color at half resolution, sharp one-pixel color edges, as in pixel art, can look slightly softer than in the GIF.
FAQ
How do I convert a GIF to a video?
Drop the GIF on the frame above, pick a background color if it has transparent parts, and press Convert to MP4. You get an H.264 MP4, the kind of video every phone, browser and social app plays. Download it, or tap Share on a phone.
Will the MP4 keep the same speed?
Yes. Every frame keeps its own duration from the GIF, down to the hundredth of a second, even when the GIF mixes long and short frames. One exception: frames set to 0 or 1 hundredths play at 10 hundredths, because that’s how browsers show them, and we match what you saw.
What happens to transparent parts?
MP4 video can’t be transparent, so those pixels get a solid color. White is the default; pick black or any custom color to match where the video will sit. A dark chat app looks better with a dark background than with a white box.
Can I make the video longer?
Use Repeat. It plays the whole GIF up to 10 times in a row inside one MP4, with no gap between loops. Handy for short GIFs, because many video players stop after one play instead of looping like a GIF does.
Does it have sound?
No. A GIF has no audio to carry over, so the MP4 is silent. If you need sound, add it afterwards in a video editor.