How to do I convert an webm (video) to a (animated) gif on the command line?

Question

I suppose ffmpeg is the weapon of choice but I didn't find out how to reach my goal.

See [How do I convert a video to GIF using ffmpeg, with reasonable quality?](http://superuser.com/a/556031/110524) for some additional information. — llogan, Aug 04 '14 at 16:20

score 71 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

71

From here:

ffmpeg -i input.webm -pix_fmt rgb24 output.gif

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

Community

1

answered Aug 04 '14 at 11:39

Barafu Albino

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I am already testing your solution. Just a moment. – brubaker Aug 04 '14 at 11:46
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Wow! It works! AND.. 2.6 MB webm -> 48 MB gif ^^ -- any thought to reduce this? – brubaker Aug 04 '14 at 11:47
I suggest to change your command in your answer to: "ffmpeg -i input.webm -pix_fmt rgb24 output.gif". – brubaker Aug 04 '14 at 11:50
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**gifsicle** is a fantastic tool to reduce gif size `gifsicle -O2 input.gif -o output.gif` – kenn Aug 04 '14 at 11:52
Try `-pix_fmt rgb16 ` – Barafu Albino Aug 04 '14 at 11:52
Thanks @kenn but it only reduces the file size in this particular example down to 46 MB. I think it is maybe better trying to reduce ffmpeg output in the first place. – brubaker Aug 04 '14 at 11:59
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@BarafuAlbino Thanks buddy, but I got an error: "Unknown pixel format requested: rgb16." – brubaker Aug 04 '14 at 12:01
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@brubaker I think I got you beat: 120K `.webm` → 2.7G `.gif`. Yes, that's with a *G*. – wchargin Nov 01 '15 at 23:19
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`rgb24` is not supported for gif, ffmpeg would use `rgb8` instead automatically. – Kane Blueriver Jan 22 '17 at 08:59
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@BarafuAlbino will this only work for webm or will it also work for other containers like mp4, mkv, ogg, etc. – Sudhir Singh Khanger Oct 10 '17 at 04:19
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Should work for anything ffmpeg can understand. And you should omit -pix_fmt these days. – Barafu Albino Oct 10 '17 at 06:29
works with avconv too (same command line options). gifsicle is awesome indeed ! – rodrigob Feb 07 '18 at 17:43
To crop the video, pass the starting second via `-ss` and the length via the `-t` option: `ffmpeg input.web -ss 1 -t 10 output.gif`. – Dan Dascalescu Nov 06 '18 at 22:19
Passing `-pix_fmt rgb16` produced "Unknown pixel format requested", and passing rgb24 warned "Incompatible pixel format 'rgb24' for codec 'gif', auto-selecting format 'rgb8'". If you don't mind, I'll edit your answer to remove the `-pix_fmt` option. – Dan Dascalescu Nov 06 '18 at 22:22

Raynal Gobel · Answer 2 · 2019-11-07T08:47:50.557

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Barafu's answer is alright. But, the resulting gif may have color conversion issue as ffmpeg complains on Incompatible pixel format 'rgb24' for codec 'gif'. Here is what I find works:

First, create PNG Palette:

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

Then, use the palette to produce gif:

ffmpeg -y -i input.webm -i palette.png -filter_complex paletteuse -r 10 output.gif

Source:

Covert MP4/Webm - ubuntubuzz.com

edited Nov 07 '19 at 08:47

answered Feb 11 '19 at 06:34

Raynal Gobel

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produced a much better result in my case than the accepted answer – Eugene Jul 15 '19 at 09:42
Confirmed that this also works on Windows 10 – Lok Jun 16 '21 at 20:13

score 9 · Answer 3 · edited May 02 '22 at 05:10

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Extending Raynal's answer, here's a script one can add to .bashrc to do the conversion:

function webm2gif() {
    ffmpeg -y -i "$1" -vf palettegen _tmp_palette.png
    ffmpeg -y -i "$1" -i _tmp_palette.png -filter_complex paletteuse -r 10  "${1%.webm}.gif"
    rm _tmp_palette.png
}

e.g.

webm2gif recording.webm

will create recording.gif.

edited May 02 '22 at 05:10

SMoenig

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answered Jul 08 '21 at 19:56

Max Ghenis

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How to do I convert an webm (video) to a (animated) gif on the command line?

3 Answers3

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