Frequently Asked Questions about GifBench
Grouped by what people are usually worried about. If your question is not here, hello@gifbench.com reaches a person.
Privacy and how this works
- Are my files really not uploaded?
- Really. There is no upload endpoint on this site — not a private one, not a temporary one. Open your browser's network panel, import a 200 MB video, and watch nothing happen. Or disconnect from the internet and keep working; the editor does not notice.
- Then where does my work go?
- Into your browser. Frames live in your tab's memory while you edit, and the draft is written to IndexedDB on your own disk so closing the tab does not lose it. Clearing site data removes it. Nobody else can read it, including us.
- Do you use cookies or analytics?
- This build sets no cookies and ships no analytics. The site is static HTML and the editor is a script that runs locally; there is no session to track because there is no session.
- Is it safe to redact something in a screen recording?
- Yes, in the sense that matters: the export re-encodes frames from scratch, so pixels under a drawn block are not written to the file in any form. What still needs care is motion — if the thing you are hiding moves, step through the frames and check the cover holds.
Formats and limits
- What can I import?
- Video: MP4, WebM, MOV, MKV and OGV, subject to your browser having a decoder for the codec inside. Images: PNG, JPG, WebP, AVIF and GIF. Support comes from the browser, so it varies a little by platform.
- What can I export?
- GIF, MP4, WebM, and PNG / JPG / WebP frame sequences packed into a ZIP. GIF export exposes colour count, dithering, palette mode and loop behaviour directly.
- Why is there a 600-frame limit?
- Every frame on the timeline is a decoded bitmap held in your tab. Past roughly 600 the browser starts failing in ways that lose work rather than degrade gracefully, so the cap is there to stop before that.
- Why can I not keep the audio?
- GIF has no audio track at all. For MP4 and WebM it would be possible, but the timeline can reorder, reverse and re-time clips, and there is no honest way to keep sound in sync through that. Shipping audio that is only correct sometimes is worse than not shipping it.
- My video will not open.
- Almost always a codec the browser cannot decode — ProRes, and some phone-recorded HEVC, are the usual suspects. Converting to H.264 MP4 fixes it. The file extension is not the issue; what is inside the container is.
Buying and licensing
- Is the free tier time-limited?
- No. It has no expiry, no watermark and no account. It caps export resolution and frame rate; that is the only difference.
- Is Pro a subscription?
- No. One payment. Updates are included for a year and the software keeps working indefinitely either way.
- How is a licence checked with no server?
- In your browser. That means it is not copy-protection in any strong sense, and we would rather say so than pretend. It is the honest path to paying for a tool that is deliberately built to run without us.
When something goes wrong
- The tab froze while exporting.
- Usually memory. Reduce the export size or the frame count and try again. Encoding runs in a worker, so the interface should stay responsive — if it does not, the frame cache is likely the pressure point rather than the encoder.
- Colour grading is greyed out.
- Grading needs WebGL2, and some older devices and locked-down browser profiles do not provide it. Everything else keeps working; only the grading panel is unavailable.
- I lost my draft.
- Drafts live in this browser's storage for this site. They are lost by clearing site data, by using private browsing, and by opening the editor in a different browser or profile. Very large imports are also refused as drafts, with a warning at the time, because writing them would fail after the work was already done.
Everything above runs in this tab
No upload, no account, no watermark. Open the workbench and see for yourself.