How is a video converted to an animated GIF?

Video-to-GIF conversion samples frames from a clip and encodes them into a looping image sequence. The format is convenient for short silent demonstrations and reactions that need broad image support, but it stores no audio and handles photographic color far less efficiently than modern video.

The browser extracts frames through video and canvas APIs and gifenc creates the GIF locally. Frame rate, dimensions, duration, and the limited palette strongly affect size and banding. Long clips can consume substantial memory and produce very large files, so trim and scale the source first.