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It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

singhkays.com

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Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#211
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gif was killed a long time ago by webm

Last I checked my iPhone can't do webm or webp

You can support a variety of formats in Safari using WebAssembly builds of the decoders. WebAssembly for audio and image formats is more than fast enough. It's even fast enough for VP9 video.

WebP demo: https://webmproject.github.io/libwebp-demo/webp_wasm/index.h...

Theora\VP8\VP9\Opus\Vorbis demo: https://brionv.com/misc/ogv.js/demo/

ogv.js on GitHub: https://github.com/brion/ogv.js

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Just one problem I discovered recently is that no other format does looping properly. With a GIF, you can right-click and save it, and all the looping info is inside the file. The quality is crappy, but it just works. With all “proper” video formats, looping info is metadata, stored separately. You can’t even go for something slightly more modern, animated PNGs, because there are warring formats and very few too…

Looping is up to the video player, not the format or container. What "video formats" have looping as metadata? Gifs only have a loop flag so static images can be displayed instead of looped indefinitely as video.

> What "video formats" have looping as metadata

QuickTime (MOV/MooV)

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#213

Okay, I'm on board. But what container am I meant to be using for my AV1 content? I see the value of a limited subset of mkv, e.g. webm, but webm is too limited in my opinion. It has no facilities for soft subtitles for instance. How is that an acceptable state of affairs? That's an accessibility issue. And yes, I know websites can send subtitles separately then render the subtitles over the element, but that's no ex…

In the article, I embed AV1 in MP4 container. Does that not work for your scenario?

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#217

I don't think it can be killed unless (unordered) - looping is solved and convenient to configure - it can be cross media barriers (copied into a text, copied into an e-mail, etc.) - it pleases the bandwidth gods (are gifs usually smaller? i know that they have a limited color palette)

Your problems 1 & 3 are solved in the article. I compare the size of the GIF to the videos. In one of the scenes it's ~11 MB for GIF and < 500 KB for AV1 video

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the current direction of the industry, the most likely candidate for this in the not-so-distant future is HEIF, which has support for an image-sequence [1]. HEIF is an ISOBMFF (aka Quicktime/MP4 container)-derived container format for images, image sequences, and transformations. Its most visible use right now is Apple Live Photos, but various use-cases exist [2]. OS and application support is increasing. Work…

Which, exactly like GIF in its very beginning, is encumbered by an infinite amount of patents. You can't replace an open format with a patented one; killing video patents is the very reason AV1 exists.

Which patents is HEIF itself encumbered by and who runs a patent licensing pool for HEIF?

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#219

The test results in this blog do not function correctly on iOS latest, so while I endorse this as a general future goal, make sure you have a proper fallback solution in place if iPhone users are relevant to you.

Normally, you can specify GIF as a fallback as seen in this article https://www.singhkays.com/blog/detect-rolling-credits-video-...

Even though the first preference is AV1, the 2nd, 3rd & 4th preferences are VP9, H264 and GIF which should play

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#220

Okay, I'm on board. But what container am I meant to be using for my AV1 content? I see the value of a limited subset of mkv, e.g. webm, but webm is too limited in my opinion. It has no facilities for soft subtitles for instance. How is that an acceptable state of affairs? That's an accessibility issue. And yes, I know websites can send subtitles separately then render the subtitles over the element, but that's no ex…

In the article, I embed AV1 in MP4 container. Does that not work for your scenario?

That works, but at the same time I'd like to see webm amended to include optional subtitle tracks.
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