Question: Why do Animated GIFs Look So Grainy?
Ever noticed that animated GIFs tend to have a bit of a static-y look to them, as if you're watching analog TV and getting a bit of snow? There's a reason for that, and it's got nothing to do with signal interference.
Answer: Barring any questionable image quality from your source material, the graininess comes from the fact that animated GIFs have a limited color palette to work with and will use nearest-color substitution for colors that aren't in its saved palette, resulting in grainy and off-color images. Unlike JPEGs, which can have millions of colors, or vector images (which basically match any color you need), GIFs use anywhere from 2 to 256 colors in a stored palette to render an image. The palette can be a standard palette, web adaptive palette, custom palette, or greyscale palette, but it's still limited in its color options. If you're trying to render a high-resolution video with a wide range of color variations as a GIF, it's going to lose a lot of quality.
