Gif

Overview ​

GIF is limited to a palette of 256 colors. Choosing a good palette is key for creating high quality GIFs.

Simple ​

By default, ffmpeg uses a generic palette that tries to cover the whole color space in order to support the largest variety of content.

Using the default is the fastest way to create a GIF. Some recommended adjusts:

• fps: Frames per second, lower this to reduce GIF size
• crop: Crop part of the video
• scale: Use the default scaler bicubic or lanczos.

ffmpeg \
  -ss 00:10:29.100 -t 1.1 -i input.mp4 \
  -vf 'fps=20,scale=500:-1:flags=lanczos' \
  output.gif

Good Quality ​

The creation of the GIF is separated in 2 steps: Pallete Generation (palettegen) and GIF Generation (paletteuse).

ffmpeg \
  -ss 00:10:29.100 -t 1.1 -i input.mp4 \
  -vf \
   'fps=20,scale=500:-1:flags=lanczos,split[v1][v2];
    [v1]palettegen=stats_mode=diff[palette];
    [v2][palette]paletteuse=dither=floyd_steinberg' \
  output.gif

Steps are explained bellow.

Pallete Generation ​

There is one parameter that worth adjusting depending on the GIF to be generated, it is stats_mode.

• stats_mode=full
• stats_mode=diff

full: The default value. All pixels will be part of the color statistics. It favors static content at the cost of worst animations.

diff: Only the pixel that differs from previous frame will be accounted. It favors moving content at the cost of worst static content.

ffmpeg \
  -ss 00:10:29.100 -t 1.1 -i input.mp4 \
  -vf 'fps=20,scale=500:-1:flags=lanczos,palettegen=stats_mode=diff' \
  /tmp/palette.png

GIF Generation ​

To get the best out of the palette, dithering is used. The only predictable dithering available is bayer, all the others are error diffusion based.

These options are recommended, in order:

• dither=floyd_steinberg
• dither=sierra2_4a
• dither=bayer:bayer_scale=3

Remember to keep the other options (fps scale) the same as when you generated the palette.

ffmpeg \
  -ss 00:10:29.100 -t 1.1 -i input.mp4 \
  -i /tmp/palette.png \
  -vf \
   'fps=20,scale=500:-1:flags=lanczos[0v];
    [0v][1:v]paletteuse=dither=floyd_steinberg'
  output.gif