Convert HEVC to APNG Online

Convert HEVC to APNG Online

Turn a short HEVC (H.265) clip into an animated PNG with full 24-bit colour and 8-bit alpha — the two things a GIF cannot give you. APNG is the right target for looping UI animations, stickers, logo idles, and anything with soft gradients or anti-aliased edges that GIF's 256-colour palette turns into visible banding. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

How to Convert HEVC to APNG

1. Upload Your HEVC File: Drag and drop the .hevc clip onto the page or click "Add Files" to pick it from your computer. Batch uploads are supported and every file uses the same settings.
2. Set the Framerate: The Framerate dropdown defaults to 10 FPS (Recommended) and runs from 1 FPS (Slideshow) to 50 FPS (Max Speed). This is the single biggest control over both smoothness and size, because every frame is stored as its own near-lossless image.
3. Choose an Image Resolution (Optional): Image resolution opens on Keep original. Switch to Resolution Percentage, Preset Resolutions, or an explicit Width x Height to scale the animation down — file size falls with pixel area, so halving each side quarters it.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the animated PNG. The frames are assembled at an exact delay of one over your framerate, set to loop forever, and then run through a Zopfli optimiser before you get the file.

APNG vs GIF vs Animated WebP

The fallback row is the practical reason to prefer APNG over animated WebP for anything embedded in email or an old client: a viewer that has never heard of APNG still renders the first frame as a normal PNG, so you get a static image rather than a broken-image icon.

What Actually Drives the File Size

There is no quality slider on this page and no palette reduction, because APNG frames are stored losslessly — the levers are how many frames you keep and how big each one is.

Clip length is the lever this page does not expose — there is no trim control on the APNG conversion. If your source is longer than a few seconds, cut it first with the video cutter, which accepts .hevc directly, and upload the result here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is my APNG so much larger than the HEVC I started with?

Because the two formats work in opposite directions. H.265 is an inter-frame video codec: it stores one full picture and then only what changes, which is why a whole clip fits into a few hundred kilobytes. APNG stores every frame as a losslessly compressed image, so a few seconds of motion becomes dozens of full pictures. Running a three-second 640×360 test clip through this pipeline at the default 10 FPS produced 30 frames and a 1.4 MB APNG from a 220 KB source — a size increase, not a reduction. Keep clips short, keep the framerate low, and scale the resolution down.

Which browsers and apps play APNG?

Chrome 59+, Firefox 3+, Safari 8+ (including iOS Safari), Edge 79+, Opera 46+, and Samsung Internet 7.2+ — about 95.9% of global traffic according to caniuse. Internet Explorer and Opera Mini never supported it. The important part is what happens where support is missing: the animation chunks are ancillary, so a viewer that does not understand them displays the first frame as a normal static PNG instead of failing.

Is APNG an official standard or an extension?

It is official now. APNG began as a Mozilla extension in 2004 and was folded into the specification proper with PNG Third Edition, published as a W3C Recommendation on 24 June 2025. The three animation chunks — acTL, fcTL and fdAT — are defined there as part of the format rather than as an outside addition.

Does converting HEVC to APNG keep transparency?

The conversion preserves alpha wherever the source has it: frames are extracted in RGBA and APNG stores full 8-bit alpha, so nothing is flattened onto a background. The catch is on the input side — ordinary HEVC video has no alpha channel to preserve, so most conversions produce a fully opaque animation. APNG's alpha still matters for what comes next: soft anti-aliased edges survive if you later composite or edit the frames, where a GIF would have hard 1-bit edges.

What framerate should I pick?

Start at the 10 FPS default. It is smooth enough for interface animation and short loops while keeping the frame count sane, and it is the labelled recommendation for that reason. Move to 20–30 FPS only when the motion is fast enough that 10 FPS visibly steps, and accept a file two to three times larger. Drop to 2–5 FPS for slow pans, cursor demos, and anything slideshow-like. The frame delay written into the file is exactly one over the framerate you choose, so playback timing matches what you asked for.

Can I convert only part of the clip?

Not from this page — the APNG conversion exposes framerate and resolution but no trim control. Cut the segment you want first with the video cutter, which takes .hevc files, then bring the shortened clip back here. Trimming before conversion is also the most effective size reduction available, since frame count scales directly with duration.

Does the APNG loop, and can I set a loop count?

It loops forever. The assembler is given a loop count of zero, which the specification defines as infinite repetition, and there is no loop-count control on this page. If you need a fixed number of plays, you will need to rewrite the acTL chunk with a dedicated APNG tool after downloading.

Should I use APNG or GIF for this clip?

Choose APNG when colour fidelity or soft transparency matters — photographic content, gradients, anti-aliased logos — and when your audience is on modern browsers. Choose HEVC to GIF when the file has to work absolutely everywhere, including old email clients and forum software, or when the content is flat graphics where 256 colours costs nothing and the GIF ends up smaller. If you already have an APNG that is too big, compress APNG re-optimises it and adds file-size targets and an Auto Scale option this page does not offer.

What happens to the audio?

It is discarded. APNG is an image format with no audio track, so any soundtrack in the source is dropped. If you want the sound as well, run the same file through HEVC to MP3 separately, or keep everything together with HEVC to MP4.

What happens to my file after the conversion?

It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. Nothing is shared or made public, there is no sign-up, and no watermark is added. The practical limit on a large upload is your own connection speed rather than anything at the conversion end.