Convert MP4 to APNG Online

Convert MP4 to APNG Online

Turn an MP4 clip into an animated PNG — a lossless, full 24-bit-colour animation with none of GIF's 256-colour banding or dithering. APNG is the right output when a short loop has to stay crisp: gradients, UI recordings, logo animations and pixel art all survive intact where GIF visibly falls apart. Pick a frame rate, optionally cap the resolution, and download the result. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

How to Convert MP4 to APNG

1. Upload Your MP4 File: Drag and drop your .mp4 or .m4v onto the page, or click "Add Files" to browse. Several clips can be queued and converted with the same settings.
2. Set the Framerate: Open Advanced Options and choose a rate from the FRAMERATE dropdown. It starts on 10 FPS (Recommended); the list runs from 1 FPS up to 50 FPS. This is the single biggest control over the output size, because it decides how many frames get written.
3. Choose an Image Resolution (Optional): Image resolution starts on "Keep original". Switch to Preset Resolutions (4320p down to 16P), Resolution Percentage, or an explicit Width, Height or Width x Height to shrink the canvas — an APNG's size scales with pixel count as directly as it does with frame count.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. Frames are extracted at your chosen rate, assembled into a single looping APNG, and run through a Zopfli optimisation pass before the download appears.

Why an APNG Instead of a GIF

APNG and GIF solve the same problem — a self-contained animation that plays anywhere without a video player — but they make opposite trade-offs. GIF quantises every frame down to 256 colours and gets small; APNG keeps every pixel exactly and gets large. There is no lossy mode in APNG at all, which is precisely why people reach for it when a GIF of the same clip looks blotchy.

Animated WebP is in the table because it is the third format people weigh up, not because it is an option here — converting a video to WebP on this site produces a single still frame, not an animation. The animated alternative to APNG is MP4 to GIF, which is the safer output whenever reach matters more than colour fidelity.

Frame Count Is the Whole Story

Every frame in an APNG is stored losslessly, so the file grows roughly in step with the number of frames. That number is simply duration × frame rate, and this page converts the entire clip — there is no trim control here. A one-minute video at 30 FPS is 1,800 full-colour frames, which is not a web asset by any reasonable definition.

The practical recipe: cut the clip down to the two to five seconds that actually matter with the Video Cutter first, then convert that. Trimming beats every other size lever on this page combined, and it costs no quality at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is my APNG so much larger than a GIF of the same clip?

Because APNG never throws anything away. GIF reduces each frame to a 256-colour palette, which is itself a large, lossy compression step before the frames are even encoded; APNG stores full 24-bit colour with lossless PNG compression, so a photographic or gradient-heavy frame keeps all of its detail and all of its bytes. That is the trade you are making on purpose. To bring the size down, lower the FRAMERATE, cap the Image resolution, or shorten the clip before uploading.

Can I trim the video on this page?

No — this converter turns the whole clip into an animation, and no trim control renders here. Cut the segment you want first with the Video Cutter and upload the shortened file. That is also the most effective size control available to you: halving the duration halves the frame count, and the APNG's size follows almost linearly.

Will an APNG made from an MP4 have transparency?

Almost certainly not, because the source doesn't have any. H.264 video in an MP4 container has no alpha channel, so every frame arrives fully opaque and the APNG faithfully stores it that way. APNG itself supports full 8-bit alpha and our pipeline preserves it — that matters when the source genuinely carries alpha, or when you edit transparency into the frames afterwards, but a normal camera or screen-recorded MP4 will produce an opaque animation.

What framerate should I pick?

10 FPS, the default, is a sensible balance for UI captures, stickers and short loops — smooth enough to read, cheap enough to ship. Move up to 15-20 FPS when the motion is fast or the clip is very short, and only go to 30 FPS or beyond when smoothness genuinely matters, since the file grows in proportion. There is no benefit to choosing a rate above the source video's own frame rate; you get duplicated frames and a bigger file for nothing.

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

It loops forever. The animation is assembled with the loop count set to infinite, and there is no loop-count control on this page. If you need a play-once animation or a fixed number of repeats, you would have to edit the APNG's acTL chunk afterwards in a dedicated APNG editor — the converter always writes an endless loop.

What happens to the audio in my MP4?

It is discarded. APNG is an image format with no audio track at all, so the soundtrack cannot come along. If you need the sound as well, run the video through a separate audio extraction — MP4 to MP3 or MP4 to M4A — and pair the two files yourself.

How do I make the APNG smaller without switching to GIF?

In order of effectiveness: shorten the clip, then lower the FRAMERATE, then reduce the Image resolution. Those three multiply together — a 5-second 480p loop at 10 FPS is a fraction of a 15-second 1080p loop at 30 FPS. The output is also run through a Zopfli optimisation pass automatically, so the bytes you are left with are already close to what a lossless encoder can do. If it is still too big, the honest answer is that your clip wants a lossy format — convert it to GIF instead and accept the 256-colour palette.

Where do APNGs actually work — email, Slack, Discord?

Browsers are the safe ground: Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari all animate APNG natively, which caniuse puts at roughly 95.9% of global traffic. Outside the browser it is patchier — many chat apps, email clients and CMS uploaders still treat .png as a still image and will show only the first frame. Because that first-frame fallback is built into the format, an APNG degrades to a clean static image rather than breaking, but if the destination is an email newsletter or an older platform, GIF remains the dependable choice.

What happens to my uploaded video?

It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. There is no account requirement, no watermark on the output, and your files are never shared or made public.