gif2apng.sf.net

gif2apng is a simple program that converts animations from GIF to APNG format.

It disproves the common misconception that Animated PNG files are always too big, as it actually creates APNG files smaller than the original GIFs. Command-line version is very easy to use, and available for all major OSes. GUI version for Windows is also available.

Command line: gif2apng [options] anim.gif [anim.png]

-z0: zlib compression

-z1: 7zip compression (default)

-z2: Zopfli compression

-i##: number of iterations (default -i15) for 7zip and Zopfli

-kp: keep palette from GIF as is, do not optimize it.

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Mass conversion, if you need to process all GIFs in the current directory:

for %%f in (*.gif) do gif2apng %%f

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Example:

GIF = 97 864 bytes

APNG = 77 472 bytes

In this example, APNG is 20% smaller than original GIF (source). It's clear that bandwidth savings from switching to APNG could be quite significant, considering it's a lossless conversion. Alternative solutions like HTML5 video codecs or lossy animated WebP could produce noticable artifacts on computer graphics type of animation like the above example.

Command-line version of gif2apng is available for all major OSes, there is also a GUI version for Windows. C++ source code is available under zlib license.

GIF vs APNG vs WebP comparison: http://littlesvr.ca/apng/gif_apng_webp.html

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