gifslop

A small TanStack Start app that converts MOV/MP4 videos to GIFs entirely in the browser with ffmpeg.wasm.

Why client-side?

For a small, occasional-use app this is the simplest and most private architecture:

• video bytes never leave the device
• no upload storage, job queue, or FFmpeg server to operate
• static/serverless-friendly deployment
• the FFmpeg core is loaded only when conversion starts

The tradeoffs are the initial WebAssembly download, browser memory limits, and slower conversion than native FFmpeg. A native server worker becomes worthwhile for long videos, files above a few hundred MB, batch processing, or many regular users.

Develop

bun install
bun --bun run dev

Code quality

The project uses the Oxc toolchain:

bun run format
bun run lint
bun run typecheck
bun run check

Deploy to Cloudflare Workers

The app uses Cloudflare's official Vite plugin with TanStack Start's Worker entrypoint.

bunx wrangler login
bun run deploy

Generate binding types after adding Cloudflare bindings to wrangler.jsonc:

bun run cf-typegen

Equivalent native FFmpeg command

The default settings reproduce the command previously used for the full video:

ffmpeg -y -i input.mov \
  -vf "fps=24,scale=240:-1:flags=lanczos,split[s0][s1];[s0]palettegen=max_colors=64[p];[s1][p]paletteuse=dither=bayer" \
  -loop 0 output.gif