Convert GIF to MP4

Why an MP4 beats a GIF for motion

GIF dates from 1987 and was made for pictures, not video. Each frame is limited to 256 colors and compressed with a method meant for drawings, so a few seconds of motion can weigh several megabytes. H.264, the video codec inside an MP4, describes most frames by what changed since the last one, which is why the same clip as an MP4 is often many times smaller.

Smaller files load faster, use less of a phone's data plan and get under upload limits more easily. That is why web developers swap the GIFs on their pages for short MP4s, and why an MP4 is often the better file to send. It also plays in any video player, on any phone and any TV, where a GIF depends on an app that shows animated pictures. And a page that loads a dozen small MP4s instead of a dozen GIFs simply feels quicker.

What changes in the MP4

• No sound, as before. GIFs have none, so the MP4 is silent. You can add music to it in the Video Editor.
• Looping is up to the player. A GIF loops by itself; an MP4 plays once unless the player is set to repeat. On a web page, a video element with the autoplay, loop, muted and playsinline settings behaves like a GIF. To repeat the clip inside the file itself, loop the video in the editor.
• No see-through parts. MP4 has no transparency, so the clear areas of a GIF are filled in.
• Even sizes. H.264 needs an even width and height, so a GIF 501 pixels wide becomes 500.
• The same colors. An MP4 can show millions of colors, but it cannot invent the ones the GIF left out.

Quality and size settings

A GIF cannot be copied into an MP4, so As it is converts it too, at high quality. For most GIFs, As it is or High is right: the MP4 is usually far smaller already, and the eye sees nothing lost. Balanced aims at about half the size again, which suits big, screen-wide GIFs on a web page.

Under More settings, Size can shrink a large GIF, though never enlarge a small one: Octoolo will not make a video bigger than its original. Frames a second stays as the GIF had it unless you lower it. The MP4 is H.264 by default; choose H.265 (HEVC) or AV1 under Video codec only if you know where it will play. H.264 goes to the graphics card if the card can encode video, and one GIF is converted at a time.

Many GIFs at once

If a site, a wiki or a slide deck is full of GIFs, convert the lot in one go. Drop the folder that holds them: Octoolo finds them in it and in its subfolders, up to 500, and saves each MP4 beside its GIF with the same name, so swapping one for the other is easy. Nothing is overwritten, and the GIFs stay as they were. Every finished line shows the MP4's size with the change in percent, so the GIFs that were costing you the most stand out at a glance.

Going the other way, from a clip to an animation, is MP4 to GIF. To keep a single frame of a GIF as a still picture, use GIF to PNG.