Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why BPG will replace GIFs and more

eek.ro

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 121 posts

Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more

#51

Post by salehenrahman »

kalleboo wrote: post #45

Why can't we just use MP4? Add an inline JavaScript decoder for Mobile Safari, and then at least all the other browsers get instant hardware decoding. Are there trust issues with allowing third-party MP4 embeds into user-submitted content such as forums/hosted blogs? Do we need a "no sound"/"max file size" attribute on the video tag?

Videos--more specifically mp4 videos--can be embedded into web pages. They just don't autoplay on mobile browsers.

Hence why there is a push for alternatives to Gif/APNG and mp4/webm. We want a video-like animation, that plays on page load.

Now, the real question is, why don't mp4s play when we hit play?

I can only speculate, but I think it's because mp4s are streamable media, where a troll can simply decide to keep streaming mp4s and drain the user's bandwidth. (Never mind the fact that it is also a problem with Gifs.)

Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more

#52

Post by salehenrahman »

salehenrahman wrote: post #49

Half the comments are pointing out that BPG is implemented in JavaScript. Like no shit? It's not natively supported in browsers, and OP makes a call for everyone to push browsers to natively support it. I mean like, geez, I want a proper video-like playback format (e.g. 24+ frames per second) at a smaller file size, so that I can view videos on my mobile phone. Gif lags on mobile internet, and MP4 requires that we ex…

And also, I might point out, from an earlier comment that I posted; the BPG decoder is merely a polyfill.

If we rejected every feature that began as mere half-baked polyfills, we wouldn't have the web that we have today.

Here's just a few examples:

    - images for rounded corners    
    - Gif/Flash/JavaScript for animations    
    - Cookies for storage    
    - Flash for browser-based webcam calls, etc.

Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more

#53

Post by Grue3 »

mikeash wrote: post #26
Grue3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps GIF wasn't intended for this use case? Oh right, it wasn't. There are plenty of video formats that are. That doesn't make them "GIF replacement".

GIF has already been replaced by better formats. The one exception to this is short, looping videos, where GIF still enjoys enormous popularity. So yeah, GIF wasn't intended for this use case. But that's the use case it has right now. Go back 20 years, and "GIF" means a 256-color losslessly compressed image, occasionally animated. Today, "GIF" nearly always means a short looping video with horrible compression. Pract…

>GIF has already been replaced by better formats.

As long as Chrome/Webkit doesn't support APNG, there's no ubiquitous format that directly replaces GIF.

>Today, "GIF" nearly always means a short looping video with horrible compression.

To me, GIF means an image format. The fact that many people misuse the terminology doesn't mean we should propagate it. Instead, people should be educated on the difference between lossy video formats and image formats that support animation, and which is preferable for various sorts of media. Articles like the OP only confuse the issue further. As someone who has authored animation-editing software (Animstack script for GIMP), it's a major pain in the ass to explain these misconceptions to users. The least we can do is to use correct terminology, and educate people at every opportunity.

Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more

#54

Post by mikeash »

Grue3 wrote: post #53
mikeash wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GIF has already been replaced by better formats. The one exception to this is short, looping videos, where GIF still enjoys enormous popularity. So yeah, GIF wasn't intended for this use case. But that's the use case it has right now. Go back 20 years, and "GIF" means a 256-color losslessly compressed image, occasionally animated. Today, "GIF" nearly always means a short looping video with horrible compression. Pract…

>GIF has already been replaced by better formats. As long as Chrome/Webkit doesn't support APNG, there's no ubiquitous format that directly replaces GIF. >Today, "GIF" nearly always means a short looping video with horrible compression. To me, GIF means an image format. The fact that many people misuse the terminology doesn't mean we should propagate it. Instead, people should be educated on the difference between lo…

> As long as Chrome/Webkit doesn't support APNG, there's no ubiquitous format that directly replaces GIF.

That's a fun trick, to quote one sentence and disagree with it in a way that is already covered by the following sentence stating there is an exception.

Do you find this helps further the conversation?

Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more

#55

Post by dperfect »

salehenrahman wrote: post #49

Half the comments are pointing out that BPG is implemented in JavaScript. Like no shit? It's not natively supported in browsers, and OP makes a call for everyone to push browsers to natively support it. I mean like, geez, I want a proper video-like playback format (e.g. 24+ frames per second) at a smaller file size, so that I can view videos on my mobile phone. Gif lags on mobile internet, and MP4 requires that we ex…

> Gif lags on mobile internet, and MP4 requires that we explicitly hit the play button on mobile browsers.

Wouldn't the more obvious choice be simply adding an option in browsers to not require hitting the play button (perhaps for MP4 that has no sound)?

Even with browser support for BPG, MP4 has the huge advantage of hardware acceleration in almost all modern devices[1].

[1] In theory, BPG may be able to take advantage of similar hardware acceleration, but why not just fix the user experience around an existing format rather than implement yet another format?

Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more

#56

Post by salehenrahman »

shanselman wrote: post #16

It says "Spot the differences? :) There’s none." Really? The BPG is WAY worse, IMHO. It's immediately apparent. I noticed it with my eyes before I parsed the text.

MP4 to BPG conversion. What else did you expect?

We're essentially converting from one frequency-domain format to another in order to accommodate an entirely new inter-frame compression format. There definitely needs to be a frequency-domain to spatial-domain conversion, which that, in itself, is lossy, then it goes back to frequency-domain when re-encoding.

Give OP a break.

Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more

#59

Post by nightcracker »

jonsneyers wrote: post #43
kjsthree wrote: post #14

How does this compare to FLIF? The responsive features of FLIF seem fantastic. http://flif.info/

FLIF only has a lossless mode. For lossless animation, it usually beats GIF, APNG, MNG, WebP and BPG. It is the only responsive animation format afaik. For lossy movies, actual video codecs are best, since they're designed for that. BPG is essentially HEVC (a great but patent-encumbered video codec) so it should be good at lossy movies -- it will be worse on line-art animations with hard edges like e.g. cartoons, or…

I don't think this is entirely fair. The full encoding of FLIF is lossless, yes, but it has VERY strong progressive decoding.

You could just truncate the file at x% and get lossy encoding that way.

Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more

#60

Post by CaptSpify »

dperfect wrote: post #55
salehenrahman wrote: post #49

Half the comments are pointing out that BPG is implemented in JavaScript. Like no shit? It's not natively supported in browsers, and OP makes a call for everyone to push browsers to natively support it. I mean like, geez, I want a proper video-like playback format (e.g. 24+ frames per second) at a smaller file size, so that I can view videos on my mobile phone. Gif lags on mobile internet, and MP4 requires that we ex…

> Gif lags on mobile internet, and MP4 requires that we explicitly hit the play button on mobile browsers. Wouldn't the more obvious choice be simply adding an option in browsers to not require hitting the play button (perhaps for MP4 that has no sound)? Even with browser support for BPG, MP4 has the huge advantage of hardware acceleration in almost all modern devices[1]. [1] In theory, BPG may be able to take advant…

Honestly, I view the need to hit the play button as the right user-experience. Sure, a user-defined option to turn that off would be cool, but I'd never use it. I wish GIFs had that option as well, actually
Post reply on HN