Convert GIF to MP4
Free online converter for GIF files. H.264/AAC video that plays on virtually any device. Nothing to install, no watermark, and every file is deleted automatically.
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Upload a GIF file to convert it to MP4. Up to 3 files at once, 100 MB each.
Free · up to 3 files · 100 MB each · files deleted automatically after 1 hour.
About GIF and MP4
GIF .gif
A 1987 format that survives for one reason: it animates, and it plays everywhere without a video player. Its palette is capped at 256 colours per frame.
Good for
- Animation that works in any browser and any chat app
- Lossless within its 256-colour palette
- Universally supported after nearly four decades
Trade-offs
- 256 colours means visible banding on photographs
- Transparency is on-or-off per pixel, so edges look jagged
- Far larger than a real video file for the same clip
image/gif
MP4 .mp4
The universal video container, normally holding H.264 video and AAC audio. If a device plays video at all, it plays MP4.
Good for
- Plays on effectively every device, browser and editor
- Excellent compression at high quality
- Streams well, and seeks quickly
Trade-offs
- H.264 carries patent licensing obligations
- Lossy — quality drops each time it is re-encoded
- Less flexible than MKV for subtitles and multiple tracks
video/mp4
GIF and MP4 side by side
| GIF | MP4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossless, 256-colour palette | Lossy (usually H.264) |
| Transparency | Yes — 1-bit, no partial | No |
| Animation | Yes | n/a |
| Typically used for | Short loops, reaction clips, simple animations | Everything — the safe default for video |
What changes when you convert GIF to MP4
Transparency is flattened
GIF carries an alpha channel and MP4 has none, so anything transparent has to become a solid colour. We composite onto white. If the image was designed to sit over a coloured background, convert to a format that keeps alpha instead — or expect a white box around it.
What your MP4 will contain
The output is H.264 video with AAC audio — the index is moved to the front of the file so it can start playing before it has finished downloading, and the colour is written as 8-bit 4:2:0, which is what phones, browsers and TVs all agree on. Quality is set by a constant-quality target rather than a fixed bitrate, so a still interview compresses small and a fast-moving clip is allowed the bits it needs.
A far smaller file, the same 256 colours
Video compression is enormously better suited to motion than GIF is, so the MP4 will typically be a fraction of the size. What it will not be is more colourful: the palette was reduced when the GIF was made, and the banding is already baked into the frames. The result also gains an audio track it has nothing to put in, and will not autoplay silently everywhere a GIF does.
Other GIF conversions
Other ways to get MP4
Worth reading next
GIF is a terrible video format, and sometimes the right one
A three-second GIF can be larger than the minute-long video it came from. Here is why that happens, and the narrow set of cases where GIF still wins anyway.
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Where your transparent background went
Transparency is the property most often lost silently in a conversion — the file looks perfect until it lands on a coloured background and grows a white rectangle.
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