convert animated gif to video on linux server while preserving frame rate

Question

how do I convert an animated gif to a video (e.g. h264@mp4) programmatically on a linux server?

I need this to process user generated content which should be output

Answer 1

Yet Another Avconv Bug (YAAB)

ffmpeg has better GIF demuxing support (and improved GIF encoding). I recommend ditching avconv and getting ffmpeg (the real one from FFmpeg; not the old charlatan from Libav). A static build is easy, or you can of course compile.

Example

ffmpeg -i in.gif -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags +faststart out.mp4

See the FFmpeg Wiki: H.264 Encoding Guide for more examples.