Will my animation keep its frames after conversion or resizing?

Usually, yes. Save it in a format that can animate and every frame comes along, even when you make it smaller.

Save it as a JPG, though, and you'll get one frozen moment.

FluffyBench · 9 min read · Reviewed October 15, 2026

Why can an animation turn into one still picture?

An animation is a flipbook. It's a stack of pictures, called frames, and each one shows for a moment before the next takes its place. Flip through them in order and you get movement.

Here's a real flipbook: Eadweard Muybridge's 1887 photographs of a mule kicking, played as an 8-frame GIF.

Frames 1, 3, 4 and 6 of the 8-frame Kicking Mule animation in order, then all 8 frames as small thumbnails with those four outlined. — Four of the eight frames, in order. Without the frames in between, the kick turns into a few unrelated poses. Sources and check notes · Photo: Eadweard Muybridge, Public domain in the United States, via Wikimedia Commons.

Some formats can hold the whole flipbook: GIF, WebP, AVIF, APNG (the animated kind of PNG) and JPEG XL. Others, like JPG and ordinary PNG, hold exactly one picture. Convert an animation to one of those and only the first page survives.

Which formats kept the animation's frames?

To see it happen, we ran that mule GIF through FluffyBench's converters once each, to WebP, GIF, AVIF and JPG, with the default settings.

Here are the same four moments pulled back out of each saved file, under the original.

Frames 1, 3, 4 and 6 from the original GIF and from each saved copy. WebP, GIF and AVIF kept all 8 frames; the JPG holds frame 1 and nothing else. — WebP, GIF and AVIF kept all 8 frames, in order. The JPG kept 1 of 8. · Photo: Eadweard Muybridge, Public domain in the United States, via Wikimedia Commons.

The JPG didn't drop the rest quietly. The conversion warned: "Only frame 1 of 8 is kept." One still picture has its uses, like a thumbnail or a preview, but it won't move. PNG works the same way: FluffyBench's PNG output saves frame 1, while APNG keeps every frame.

Need to count the frames in an animation?

Image Viewer

What happens to the frames when you resize?

Resizing works on every page of the flipbook at once. Each frame gets the new width and height, and none of them are dropped, as long as you save to a format that can animate.

Here's the idea, drawn with the mule's own frames.

An illustration: the eight Kicking Mule frames at full size, then the same eight frames at half the width. — An illustration: a smaller animation is the same eight frames, each drawn smaller. · Photo: Eadweard Muybridge, Public domain in the United States, via Wikimedia Commons.

Do the frames play at the same speed and repeat the same way?

Two more things travel with the pictures: how long each frame stays up, which sets the pace, and what happens after the last frame.

Here's what those two settings mean.

An illustration: four frames with a wait under each, then two endings, play once and stop, or go back to frame 1 and repeat. — An illustration: the waits set the pace, and the ending says stop or repeat. · Photo: Eadweard Muybridge, Public domain in the United States, via Wikimedia Commons.

FluffyBench reads the repeat setting from GIF, WebP, APNG, AVIF and JPEG XL files and writes it into the new copy. An animation that repeats forever still does, and one that plays once still stops.

The waits come along too, with one wrinkle in GIF: it stores each wait in hundredths of a second, so a GIF copy rounds every wait to the nearest 10 ms. A very fast animation can shift its pace a little. GIF also has its own limits on colors and see-through edges; the GIF, WebP and APNG guide covers those.

Doing it in FluffyBench: convert and keep the motion

FluffyBench's image converters keep the motion whenever the format under To can animate. Animated images is the setting that decides it, and it starts on Keep the animation.

Here's the whole job in FluffyBench's WebP converter, from the GIF to a saved animated WebP.

Step 1. Pick an output that can animate. Here, From is GIF and To is WebP.
1. Choose WebP, GIF, AVIF or APNG under To.
Step 2. Choose the animation from your device.
1. Choose images opens your files.
Step 3. The gear opens Settings, and the same gear closes it.
1. Open Settings here.
Step 4. Animated images decides whether the motion stays. Keep the animation saves every frame; Still of frame 1 saves one picture.
1. Leave Keep the animation selected.
Step 5. Close Settings with the gear, then convert.
1. Convert 1 to WebP makes the copy.
Step 6. Look for Animation kept on the result before you save it.
1. The new file's dimensions and size.
2. Animation kept: every frame is in the copy.
3. Download saves the WebP.

Before you use the copy, open it in FluffyBench Image Viewer. It plays the animation and counts its frames, so you can compare both with the original.

Step 1. Open the saved copy in FluffyBench Image Viewer.
1. Choose images opens the saved file.
Step 2. Press Play and watch the whole movement, start to finish.
1. Play runs the animation.
Step 3. Image info lists the frame count. Done closes it.
1. Check the frame count matches the original.
2. Done returns to the picture.

Image Viewer always loops what it plays, so check the ending (stop or repeat) in the app where the animation will live. Keep the original until the copy plays the way you want there.

Resizing an animation in FluffyBench Image Space Saver

FluffyBench Image Space Saver makes pictures smaller, one or a whole batch at a time, and keeps each animation unless you ask for a still.

Here's the mule GIF shrunk to 320 pixels wide as an animated WebP.

Step 1. Choose the animation you want to make smaller.
1. Choose images opens your files.
Step 2. The gear opens Settings, and the same gear closes it.
1. Open Settings here.
Step 3. Pick Profile: Custom to see every setting.
1. Custom shows the Animated images setting.
Step 4. Keep the animation shrinks every frame and keeps them all.
1. Leave Keep the animation selected.
Step 5. Set the new size. With Keep aspect ratio on, a width is enough.
1. Choose Dimensions.
2. Type the width you need, here 320.
3. Keep aspect ratio stops stretching.
Step 6. Close Settings with the gear, then process the animation.
1. Process 1 image makes the smaller copy.
Step 7. The smaller copy says Animation kept: every frame is there, each one smaller.
1. The new dimensions and size.
2. Animation kept: every frame is still there.
3. Download saves the copy.

What if FluffyBench won't keep the animation?

Two limits can stop an animated copy. One is length: FluffyBench keeps up to 500 frames, and up to 64,000,000 pixels across all frames added together. A longer or bigger animation is refused, and Still of frame 1 can save one picture of it instead.

Here's the warning for an overlong GIF in the WebP converter. It appears as soon as you add the file.

Step 1. Too many frames: FluffyBench warns before you convert.
1. The warning names the frame limit.

The other is a file-size cap. The converters can't aim for a size and keep the animation at once. Image Space Saver does try, but a kept animation that comes out over the cap isn't saved.

Here's the converter's size cap, and what happens if it's on when you press Convert.

Step 2. A size cap and Keep the animation don't mix in the converter.
1. Leave this off to keep the animation.
Step 3. With the cap on, Convert stops straight away and says why.
1. The message names the size limit.

In both tools, shrinking the frames with Size is the way to a smaller animation.

How we reviewed

Reviewed October 15, 2026

The 2026-10-15 outputs came from the public-domain Kicking Mule Muybridge animation GIF (1,726,526 bytes, 8 frames), with one result each through the GIF to WebP, GIF, AVIF and JPG converters at their default settings; the saved files and frame counts are recorded in the measurement record. Converted the supplied GIF with the browser-local image.convert operation in a local production preview. WebP frame count came from ANMF chunks in the saved WebP; GIF and AVIF frame counts came from decoding the saved output files; JPG was checked as one complete JPEG image. The warning was captured from the same JPG conversion result. Saved sizes: WebP 460.9 KB (460,898 bytes), GIF 1.7 MB (1,730,987 bytes), AVIF 1.0 MB (1,013,632 bytes), JPG 71.9 KB (71,939 bytes). The frame comparison decodes frames 1, 3, 4 and 6 from those saved files. The resize and timing drawings are illustrations, not measurements. The tool walkthroughs were captured on October 22, 2026 from the current build with the same GIF and the saved WebP; the Image Space Saver copy in them is 320 pixels wide. Repeat settings are read from GIF, WebP, APNG, AVIF and JPEG XL sources and written into GIF, WebP, AVIF, APNG and JPEG XL outputs; HEIC sequences are written to repeat forever. Image Viewer loops every animation while it plays, without changing the file.

This page includes one local conversion run of the Kicking Mule GIF using the converters' default settings. Frame counts come from the saved output files, and the JPG warning came from the same run. File sizes depend on the build and encoder settings and are not a quality comparison. An earlier check, kept from a previous version of this guide, resized a 8 frames HEIC animation to a 640 px by 360 px WebP that kept all 8 frames; it ran in installed Chrome on a Windows desktop, and its browser version, build, date and output files weren't kept. Limits: up to 500 frames and 64,000,000 pixels across all frames; GIF output uses at most 256 colors, makes pixels at or below opacity level 127 fully transparent, and stores waits in 10 ms steps. Phones and Safari were not tested.

The real-file HEIC observations are retained from the existing guide and were not rerun for this article.

Phone results and Safari behavior with HEIC sequences were not tested.

The HEIC output loop count was not recorded; the converter's output repeat count is a pipeline policy, not a source-file measurement.

A later Image Space Saver check conflicted with the earlier notice behavior, so the notice is not guaranteed.

Image credits

Kicking Mule frames in playback order — Eadweard Muybridge. Public domain in the United States. A FluffyBench-owned SVG shows four source frames in order and all eight source frames as thumbnails, with first-party arrows and labels.
Kicking Mule frames from each saved copy — Eadweard Muybridge. Public domain in the United States. A FluffyBench-owned SVG shows frames 1, 3, 4 and 6 decoded from the source GIF and from FluffyBench's saved WebP, GIF, AVIF and JPG outputs, with first-party labels.
Kicking Mule frames before and after resizing — Eadweard Muybridge. Public domain in the United States. A FluffyBench-owned illustration draws the eight source frames at full size and at half the width.
Kicking Mule frames on a timing and repeat diagram — Eadweard Muybridge. Public domain in the United States. A FluffyBench-owned illustration places source frames on a timeline with illustrative waits and two endings.