OneTaskBy Tim King · Updated
Video to WebP
Make a Looping Animated WebP From MP4, Far Smaller Than a GIF
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How the Video to WebP works
This video to WebP converter turns a few seconds of video into an animated WebP: a looping image that works like a GIF but is often a third of the size, with full colour. Set the start, length, width and quality, press Render and download. The conversion runs in your browser.
GIF has been the format for short loops since the 1990s, but it is limited to 256 colours per frame and compresses poorly. Animated WebP, from Google, uses the same compression as WebP photos. It keeps smooth gradients and skin tones, supports transparency, and every current browser shows it.
How the video to WebP conversion works
The tool seeks through your chosen range at the frame rate you pick and copies each frame to its own canvas at the chosen width. Each frame is then encoded as a lossy WebP image at the selected quality, and the frames are wrapped in an animated WebP container with a fixed delay between them, set to loop forever.
WebP compared with GIF
| Animated GIF | Animated WebP | |
|---|---|---|
| Colours | 256 per frame | Millions (24-bit) |
| Typical size, 3 s at 480 px | 2–4 MB | 300 KB–1 MB |
| Transparency | On or off per pixel | Smooth alpha |
| Browser support | Everywhere | All current browsers |
| Chat apps and email | Widely shown | Patchy |
Choosing settings
Quality maps to WebP's 0–1 scale: High is 0.9, Medium 0.75 and Low 0.5. Medium is hard to tell from High at small sizes. Frames per second has the biggest effect on file size: 15 looks smooth for most motion, and 10 is plenty for a reaction loop. Width above 640 pixels is rarely worth it for an inline loop; use a real video for anything larger.
Tips and pitfalls
Keep loops short. Every frame is stored as a full image, so a 10-second WebP at 25 fps holds 250 pictures. Three to five seconds is the sweet spot.
Check where it will be shown. Websites and modern apps show WebP fine. Some email clients, older chat apps and social upload forms still expect GIF; use the video to GIF tool for those.
Sound is dropped. Animated images have no audio track.
How to read the result
The stats show the number of frames, the image size, the delay between frames in milliseconds and the file size. The preview loops the result exactly as it will appear on a page.
FAQ
Is animated WebP better than GIF?
For most clips, yes. Animated WebP has full colour instead of 256 colours and is usually two to five times smaller for the same clip. The only real drawback is that some email clients and older chat apps still do not display it.
Why not just use an MP4 video?
A short muted MP4 is often smaller still, but it needs a video player or a video tag with autoplay settings. An animated WebP works anywhere an image does, such as in markdown files, image fields and content systems that only accept pictures.
Does the WebP keep the sound?
No. Animated WebP is an image format and has no audio track, so any sound in the clip is dropped. If you need sound, trim the video with the video trimmer and share it as a video file instead.
Is my video uploaded to convert it to WebP?
No. The frames are captured and encoded as WebP by your browser on your own device. Nothing is sent to a server at any stage, so you can convert private or unreleased clips without any risk.
See also: all Audio & Video tools, Units, Images, Documents, Data & Code.
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