This command reduces the framerate to 12 per second and resizes to 320×180 pixels. To achieve this we need the following command: ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -r 12 -s 320x180 output.gif In order to reduce the size of the file we can reduce the size of the images or we can reduce the number of frames per second. So you’ll end up with a file that’s much bigger than the original mpeg4 and probably something that exceeds the upload limit of Diaspora*, Friendica or Mastodon. Unfortunately gif images are large due to their lossless data compression. Where the name of the input file is input.mp4 and output.gif is the name of the output file. The basic command to create an animated GIF from a mpeg4 is: ffmpeg -i input.mp4 output.gif Below I will explain not only how to create a animated GIF from an mpeg4 movie but I also provide instructions to improve the quality. In fact suppose this post is more for users that like to tinker a lot with their animated GIFs. A word of warning FFmpeg is a command line tool that’s very versatile but it’s not for everybody. FFmpeg is available for Windows, Linux and OSX. FFmpeg is a good FLOSS tool to create these animated GIFs. Animated GIFs are after all these years still pretty popular.

Ffmpeg resize animated gif