Convert APNG to HEVC Online

Convert APNG to HEVC (H.265)

An animated PNG stores every frame losslessly with a full 8-bit alpha channel, which is why a two-second loop routinely runs to tens of megabytes. HEVC — ITU-T H.265 / ISO/IEC 23008-2, first approved in 2013 — is the successor to H.264 and reaches comparable quality at roughly half the bitrate, so the same animation comes back as a small fraction of the source size. This page also spells out exactly what the .hevc file you download contains, because that is where most H.265 converters leave people guessing.

What the .hevc File From This Tool Actually Contains

Plenty of tools that write a .hevc extension hand you a raw H.265 elementary stream: coded video with no container, no index, and no timestamps. Those files are awkward — a lot of players simply refuse them, and the usual advice is to remux them with FFmpeg before you can do anything useful.

This converter does not produce that. The H.265 video is muxed into a Matroska container and the file is named .hevc, so it carries proper timing and opens in VLC and mpv exactly as downloaded. If an application rejects it on the extension alone, rename the file to .mkv — the bytes are already Matroska, so nothing is re-encoded and nothing is lost.

Two other things are worth knowing before you convert. The output has no audio track, because an APNG is an image format and carries no sound; the Audio Codec selector on this page exists for sources that do have audio and has nothing to encode here. And HEVC, like every mainstream video codec, has no alpha channel — transparent pixels are composited onto the Background Color before encoding.

How to Convert APNG to HEVC

1. Upload Your APNG File: Drag the .apng onto the drop zone or use the file picker. The tool also accepts a .png that contains animation chunks, which is how many exporters save APNG.
2. Set the Background Color: This is the colour transparent and semi-transparent pixels are flattened onto, and it also fills any letterbox bars if you change the output shape. White is the default; pick Black or a brand colour if the clip will sit on a dark page.
3. Pick File Compression and Video Resolution: Quality Preset is the simplest control (its dropdown starts at Very High). Switch to Constant Quality or Constraint Quality if you want to set the encoder's CRF yourself — bitrate and file-size targeting modes don't appear for image sources. Under Video resolution, choose Keep original, a Preset or Fixed Resolution, or an explicit Width x Height.
4. Convert and Download: Press Convert and save the result. No sign-up and no watermark. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours.

Video Codec is fixed to the H.265 / HEVC family on this page — that is the whole point of the target — so there is nothing to change there.

APNG at a Glance

HEVC (H.265) at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I convert APNG to HEVC or to MP4?

Pick HEVC when size is the priority and you know the playback target decodes H.265 — an Apple device, a recent smart TV, or your own FFmpeg pipeline. Pick MP4 when the clip has to open reliably on someone else's machine: H.264 in MP4 is the most broadly decodable combination there is, and a .hevc extension will confuse software that a .mp4 never would. If in doubt, convert APNG to MP4 instead.

My player will not open the .hevc file. What do I do?

Rename it to .mkv. The file we produce is already a Matroska container, so the rename costs nothing and no re-encode is involved — it just stops apps from judging the file by an extension they do not have registered. If you would rather not rename anything, use the APNG to MKV tool, which writes the same container with the expected extension.

Why does the HEVC clip have no sound?

Because the source has none. An APNG is a sequence of still images with frame timing; the format has no audio chunk to carry a soundtrack, so there is nothing for the encoder to pass through. The Audio Codec list on this page applies when the input is a video or audio file. If you need a soundtrack, add it afterwards in a video editor.

Where did my transparent background go?

It was composited onto the Background Color, white unless you changed it. HEVC's mainstream profiles have no alpha channel, so transparency cannot survive an encode to H.265 in any tool — the choice is only ever which colour replaces it. Set Background Color to match wherever the clip will be placed, or keep an alpha-capable image format instead: APNG to WebP keeps full 8-bit alpha in an animated file.

How much smaller is HEVC than the original APNG?

Usually dramatically smaller, for two independent reasons. APNG is lossless and stores each frame in full, with no prediction between frames; HEVC is lossy and codes only what changes from frame to frame. On top of that, H.265 needs about half the bitrate of H.264 for the same perceived quality. The exact ratio depends on how much motion your animation has — a mostly static loop compresses far harder than a fast, noisy one.

Does the converted video keep my APNG's frame timing?

Yes. An APNG carries per-frame delays in its fcTL chunks, and the decoder reads them, so the encoded clip runs at the pace the animation was authored at rather than a fixed slideshow rate. There is no per-image duration control on this page for that reason — it only appears for still-image sources that have no timing of their own.

Can I make the file hit a specific size?

Not by typing a number — the file-size and bitrate targeting modes are not offered for image sources, so there is no box for a megabyte figure here. You steer the size instead: lower the Quality Preset a step, switch File Compression to Constant Quality and raise the CRF a few points, or reduce the Video resolution. Each of those cuts compounds with the others, and one or two steps is usually enough to land under a cap.

Is HEVC lossless like the APNG was?

No. The encode is lossy, so pixel values change. In practice the visible cost is concentrated in exactly the content APNG is popular for: hard edges, flat colour fields, and small text can pick up slight softening or ringing. Keeping Quality Preset high, leaving Video resolution on Keep original, and avoiding an aggressively high CRF all reduce that. If you need pixel-exact frames, the answer is not a video codec at all — stay on an image format.

What is the largest APNG I can convert?

The real constraint is upload size and time rather than a frame count — APNG is lossless, so long or high-resolution animations get big quickly. If uploading is slow, pick a smaller Preset Resolution: it shrinks the transfer and the encode at the same time. The codec is never the constraint here — HEVC's higher levels reach 8K frame sizes.