Publisher to WebM Converter

Convert Publisher (.pub) to WebM

WebM is the format to pick when a Publisher document has to auto-play on a web page. It is a royalty-free Matroska profile carrying VP8, VP9 or AV1, with native support in Chrome 25+, Firefox 28+ and Edge 79+, and in Safari 16 on macOS and 17.4 on iOS — so a <video> tag with a single WebM source now covers current browsers without a plugin or a Flash-era fallback.

This converter reads the .pub with LibreOffice's Draw component (the libmspub importer), renders each page at 300 DPI, and encodes the pages as a silent slideshow. The codec opens on VP9, which is the one that behaves correctly for still frames.

How to Convert Publisher to WebM

1. Upload Your Publisher File: Drag your .pub onto the page or click "+ Add Files". Each page in the publication becomes one frame of the video.
2. Set Image Duration: The dropdown opens at 5 seconds per page and ranges from a single frame (1/60s) to 10 seconds. Page count multiplied by this value is your total runtime.
3. Keep Video Codec on VP9, and Set Video Resolution for the Web: VP9 is preselected and is the right choice here. "Video resolution" opens on "Keep original", which produces a tall page-shaped frame — switch to a Fixed Resolution such as 1280 x 720 if the video has to sit in a normal web layout.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert". Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

VP9, VP8 and AV1 on a Still-Image Source

All three codecs are offered, but they do not behave the same way when the source is a page render rather than camera footage.

The VP8 warning is worth taking seriously because the interface looks functional. Select Constant Quality on VP8 and you get a 0–63 slider that appears to do something; the encoder log tells the real story — libvpx reports "Neither bitrate nor constrained quality specified, using default CRF of 32 and bitrate of 256kbit/sec" and encodes at its own default regardless of where you put the slider. If you must use VP8 (for a genuinely ancient target), use Constraint Quality and set a Max bitrate, which is the only mode that reaches libvpx.

What the Encoder Actually Does

At 300 DPI an A4 page renders to 2481 x 3508 pixels and is even-rounded to 2480 x 3508. Pages longer than roughly 13.6 inches cross the 4096-pixel ceiling and are scaled to fit it before encoding.

Rate control is limited to three modes on an image source — Quality Preset (the default), Constant Quality and Constraint Quality. The target-file-size and fixed-bitrate modes you see on video-to-video pages are hidden here, because a still frame has no source bitrate to scale from.

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "The video is a tall portrait sliver in my page layout" — "Video resolution" is on "Keep original", so the frame is the shape of the printed page. Pick a Fixed Resolution such as 1280 x 720 or 1920 x 1080; the page is fitted inside and the remainder filled with the Background Color.
• "White bars either side of the page" — That is the Background Color doing its job. Change it to Black, or to whatever matches the surrounding page, in the Background Color dropdown.
• "Safari won't play it" — WebM is only fully supported from Safari 16 on macOS and Safari 17.4 on iOS. For older Apple devices, produce an MP4 instead: Publisher to MP4 yields the same slideshow in H.264.
• "Text looks blurry at the default settings" — Choose "Highest" or "Very High" in Quality Preset, and avoid downscaling. Sharp black text on white is the hardest thing for a lossy video codec to keep clean, so a low CRF matters more here than it would on photographic content.
• "The quality slider does nothing" — You are on VP8. Switch to VP9, or use Constraint Quality with an explicit Max bitrate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does the output have no sound?

There is no audio anywhere in this pipeline. A Publisher document has no sound track, so the audio-codec control is hidden on every image-to-video page and the WebM is written with a single video stream and no audio stream at all. Add a track afterwards in an editor if a downstream tool insists on one.

How long will the finished video be?

Pages multiplied by Image Duration. An eight-page catalogue at the default 5 seconds per page gives 40 seconds. There is no total-runtime field, so pick the Image Duration value closest to what you need.

Why 1 fps? Won't that break my player?

Every frame is a static page, so encoding one picture per page instead of twenty-five identical copies makes the file far smaller with no visual difference. Browsers handle a 1 fps WebM fine. Some non-linear editors dislike unusual frame rates on import — if you hit that, re-encode the finished file at a conventional rate rather than fighting it here.

Should I pick VP9 or AV1 for a web page?

VP9 for almost every case. AV1 compresses a little better but is dramatically slower to encode, and its browser support is thinner: Chrome 70+, Firefox 67+ and Edge 121+ have it, while Safari is still listed as partial support. On a slideshow of page renders the size difference is small anyway, because encoding at 1 fps has already removed most of the temporal redundancy the newer codec is good at exploiting — so the extra encode time buys very little.

Can I autoplay this on a web page?

Yes, and the missing audio track actually helps: browsers block autoplay for videos with sound, but a video with no audio stream at all satisfies the muted-autoplay policy. Use <video autoplay muted loop playsinline> and point the source at the WebM.

What resolution will the pages be?

The 300 DPI render — 2480 x 3508 for A4, 2550 x 3300 for US Letter — with neither side allowed past 4096 pixels. That is a portrait frame, which is usually not what you want embedded in a page, so pick a Fixed Resolution unless you are deliberately building a vertical/mobile video.

Is WebM or GIF better for putting a Publisher page on a website?

WebM, by a wide margin. GIF is limited to 256 colours per frame and stores no real compression for photographic or gradient artwork, so a page of colour graphics balloons in size and posterises. WebM keeps full colour at a fraction of the bytes. GIF only wins where you need something that works inside an <img> tag or an email client — see Publisher to GIF if that is the constraint.

What happens to my Publisher file after the conversion?

It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — never shared, never made public, and no account is required. Nothing is watermarked. If you would rather have the pages as a document than as video, Publisher to PDF keeps the text selectable.