Use a GIF as a Zoom Virtual Background

Update August 17 2021: I've got the tool working in Chrome and Firefox by launching it a standalone new window instead of loading in an iframe. It is still broken in Safari for unknown reasons.

It's not ideal, but until the whole SharedArrayBuffer debacle settles down, it's probably the best I can do right now.

Stuck in boring Zoom meetings? Have the perfect gif you want to use as your "Zoom Virtual Background", but Zoom won't let you use animated gifs?

Here's a tool to convert GIFs to MP4's that Zoom will accept!

Previously, this page was just instructions for using ffmpeg yourself. The tool uses ffmpeg for you via WASM to make it easy.

There's an easy solution - using ffmpeg to convert your GIF to an MP4.

You can install ffmpeg with brew or other package manager if you're on a UNIX-like system. Otherwise downloads are available here.

Once you have ffmpeg installed just run the following in your terminal, replacing <gif-file.gif> with the path to your gif.

ffmpeg -i <gif-file.gif> -vf scale=w=640:h=360:force_original_aspect_ratio=increase output.mp4

The flags on the command specify a minimum size of 640 by 360, Zoom's minimum video size, while maintaining aspect ratio by increasing either dimension.

Comment by: Mike Ebbers on Aug. 24, 2020

This is legit!

Comment by: Somebody on Oct. 7, 2021

Yeah it's broken