Convert RM to APNG Online

Convert an RM Video to an Animated PNG

APNG turns a RealMedia clip into a single image file that animates anywhere a PNG can be shown — a README, a forum post, a chat window, a documentation page. Unlike GIF, it keeps full 24-bit colour and an 8-bit alpha channel, so gradients and fine detail survive instead of being crushed into a 256-entry palette.

It is worth understanding what the conversion actually builds before you start. We decode your .rm, sample it into individual full-colour PNG frames at the framerate you choose, assemble those frames into one animated PNG, and then run a Zopfli optimisation pass over the result. Every frame is stored losslessly, which is why an APNG of a long clip gets very large very quickly — and this page has no trim control, so the whole file becomes one animation. Both of those facts are worth planning around; the sections below explain how.

How to Convert RM to APNG

1. Upload Your RM File: Drag the .rm onto the page or click "Add Files" to browse. Several clips can be queued and converted with one set of settings.
2. Pick a Video Framerate: The Video Framerate dropdown runs from 50 FPS down to 1 FPS and opens on 10 FPS (Recommended). This is the single biggest lever on output size — it decides how many frames get stored, and each stored frame is a full lossless image.
3. Set the Image Resolution (Optional): Image resolution keeps the original size by default. You can also scale by percentage, pick a preset height (the width follows your clip's aspect ratio), or give an explicit width, height, or width × height. The preset list has a Use as max resolution toggle so small clips are not upscaled.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .apng. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers and deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Framerate Decides Everything About the File Size

There is no bitrate, no quality slider and no colour-count control on this page, because APNG frames are stored losslessly. What you control instead is how many frames exist and how big each one is. The arithmetic is unforgiving: framerate multiplied by duration is the frame count, and every one of those frames is a complete image.

Because RealMedia clips were usually encoded at low framerates for narrowband streaming in the first place, dropping to 10 or 8 FPS often costs less visible smoothness than you would expect. If the result is still too heavy, cut the resolution: halving the height quarters the pixel count per frame.

APNG or GIF for a RealMedia Clip?

Choose APNG when colour fidelity matters — screen recordings with anti-aliased text, anything with a gradient, anything where GIF's dithering looks obviously wrong. Choose RM to GIF when the file has to be small or has to display in absolutely every context.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is my APNG so much bigger than the original RM file?

Because RealMedia is a lossy video codec and APNG is a lossless image format. RealVideo stores only the differences between frames and throws away detail you are unlikely to notice; APNG stores each frame as a complete, exactly reproducible image. Turning a compressed video into a stack of lossless images will normally grow the file by an order of magnitude or more. Lower the framerate, cut the resolution, or use RM to GIF if size is the binding constraint.

Can I convert just part of the clip?

Not on this page — the video-to-APNG path has no trim control, so the entire clip becomes one animation. That is fine for a ten-second capture and completely impractical for a half-hour webcast. Cut the source down first with video-cutter, which accepts RealMedia files directly, and then convert the shortened clip here.

Does the animation loop, and can I set how many times?

It loops forever, and that is not adjustable here. The APNG animation-control chunk carries a play-count field, and we write it as zero, which the specification defines as "repeat indefinitely". If you need a fixed number of plays you will have to edit the acTL chunk with a dedicated APNG tool after downloading.

What framerate should I choose?

Start with the default 10 FPS and go down rather than up. RealMedia sources were compressed for narrow bandwidth and are frequently well under 30 FPS to begin with, so asking for 30 or 50 FPS mostly duplicates frames the source never contained while multiplying the file size. Screen recordings and static talking-head footage look fine at 5–8 FPS; genuine motion is worth 15–20.

Is APNG an actual standard or an unofficial extension?

It is now part of the PNG specification proper. APNG began as a Mozilla extension and lived outside the official spec for years, but W3C's PNG Third Edition — a Recommendation dated 24 June 2025 — includes animated PNG and specifies the acTL animation-control, fcTL frame-control and fdAT frame-data chunks. A viewer that does not understand those chunks still renders the file, just as a still image showing the first frame.

Does the APNG keep the original colours exactly?

Yes, to the extent the RealMedia source had them. There is no palette reduction on this conversion — the frames are extracted in full colour with an alpha channel and stored losslessly, so nothing is quantised or dithered. That is the main reason to choose APNG over GIF for anything with gradients, anti-aliased text or skin tones. The colour-reduction control you may have seen elsewhere belongs to compress-apng, not to this page.

My RM clip is only 320×240 — should I scale it up?

No. Leave Image resolution on Keep original. Upscaling cannot invent detail the source never captured, and it multiplies the bytes in every stored frame, so you pay the full size penalty for a blurrier picture. If anything, scaling down is the useful direction: it is the second-strongest size lever after framerate.

The download is named .apng — should I rename it to .png?

Often, yes, and it is completely safe to do so. APNG and PNG are the same container, so every PNG decoder can read the file either way; the difference is that a lot of software, including some upload forms and image viewers, decides what to do purely from the extension and has never heard of .apng. Renaming loses nothing: viewers that understand the animation chunks still play it, and viewers that do not show the first frame and ignore the rest. That backwards compatibility is exactly what APNG was designed for.

How are my files handled during the conversion?

Your RM file is uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers and deleted automatically after a few hours. Files are never shared or made public, there is no sign-up and no watermark. With APNG the download is usually the larger transfer, so it is worth choosing a framerate and resolution before converting rather than after.