Convert MP4/WEBM Video to GIF using FFMPEG (Also, Reduce The Size)

If you wonder how to produce GIF animation from any video tutorial, the answer is ffmpeg. Learn it once and use it forever. This short article explains 2 steps to produce GIF in small size from MP4 and WEBM videos. I hope by reading this article, anyone uses Kazam to record screen can produce GIF tutorials easily & quickly!

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MP4 to GIF

Assume your video is video.mp4:

First, create a PNG pallete:

ffmpeg -y -i video.mp4 -vf palettegen palette.png

Second, produce GIF using the pallete:

ffmpeg -y -i video.mp4 -i palette.png -filter_complex paletteuse -r 10 animation.gif

The result is a file named animation.gif. I get 1.7MB GIF file out of 300KB MP4. This is 10x smaller compared to 17MB GIF I get without using pallete.

WEBM to GIF

Assume your video is video.webm:

First, like above, create a PNG pallete:

ffmpeg -y -i video.webm -vf palettegen palette.png

Second, produce GIF using the pallete:

ffmpeg -y -i video.webm -i palette.png -filter_complex paletteuse -r 10 animation.gif

Here's the result.

References

• https://superuser.com/questions/1049606/reduce-generated-gif-size-using-ffmpeg
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12573604/gif-created-from-a-movie-file-with-ffmpeg-is-really-large-in-size
• http://www.bugcodemaster.com/article/convert-video-animated-gif-using-ffmpeg