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It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

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

#241

Post by adrianN »

Ezhik wrote: post #126

At this point, killing GIF is a UX problem, not a format problem. I've talked about this before [0], but the big problem for me is that video is just difficult as hell. Compared to a GIF, it is just that much harder to save a video on a phone, and then upload it the same way as an image. Try to save a "GIF" from Twitter or from GIPHY - it's a /huge/ pain. Whatever the GIF killer is will need to pass the right click t…

I can right-click and save videos just fine. You can too, try it here: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/GregariousDevotedArachnid-mobile.m...

You just have to write some Greasemonkey script to circumvent all the crap that the video-serving websites do to prevent you from getting the normal video-in-a-browser UI. It's harder when you get this link https://gfycat.com/GregariousDevotedArachnid

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

#242

Post by njsubedi »

As an app developer, whenever I need something animated, I use the baseline MP4 format. My main motivation was that animated GIFs were not supported by Android without third party libraries.

I've had 10-15 seconds of videos (640x480) at 10 fps well under 200 KB. I also compared JPEG with MP4 and decided to use MP4 video (1 frame) instead of JPEG to keep myself from re-implementing a UI again for an image.

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

#243

Post by ezoe »

Wake me up when the AVI encoder's performance can be measured by Frames Per Second. Currently, it should better be counted by Frames Per Day. Decoder is also slow. We need a high end desktop computer for real-time decoding of AV1 video.

There is no phone/tablet that can afford such performance.

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

#244

Post by Izkata »

silversconfused wrote: post #207
silversconfused wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stop button used to stop all gifs on a page in firefox and internet explorer. Not sure if that was a bug or a feature though, since the stop button was generally not available when page load finished.

(Maybe I remembered wrong, someone else mentioned here that it was ESC, not stop)

At least on Firefox, it was indeed stop. I believe it still works too, even though nowadays they hide the button, if you expose the functionality through an addon.

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

#245

Post by d0ugie »

Spivak wrote: post #237
clouddrover wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is it really worth it to ship a decoder to every user of your site rather than encode it once on your server? Don't get me wrong, it's a super cool demo but anyone who does this is prod is a little nuts. The exception being a service that's write once read maybe like CCTV cameras.

It's all gravy, the javascript WebP decoders, until you convert your 20K high res photo site to WebP, then not realizing for a week, scratching your head about the bounce rate spiking, that you're crashing browsers left and right...

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

#247

Post by cornstalks »

zamalek wrote: post #159
acdha wrote: post #38

It's telling that the author doesn't list all of the file sizes. The GIFs are gigantic but the AV1 files are LARGER than either the H.264 or VP9 versions in every example. If we wanted to replace GIFs you'd want to go with something closer to a comparable level of support and at this scale there's no reason to use a format with no hardware support and limited client support in general: https://caniuse.com/#feat=mpeg4…

> but the AV1 files are LARGER than either the H.264 or VP9 versions in every example If the author aimed for the same quality they would be much smaller, they instead opted for the same bitrate because that would be opening the can of worms of "similar quality is subjective in the eye of the author." If you watch the samples, you can clearly see how more more AV1 gets done with [roughly] the same number of bits; H.2…

> they instead opted for the same bitrate

Except they didn't achieve quite the same bitrate. For scene 1, for example, H.264 was 209.9 kbps, VP9 was 191.2 kbps, AV1 was 230.1 kbps. Put another way: the AV1 stream had 39 additional kpbs (or 20% more bits) than the VP9 stream. 20% is a pretty big deal (especially at these low bitrates), and undermines the point the author was trying to make.

The increase in quality (and decrease in bitrate) for H.264 → VP9 is really cool. But the increase in quality for VP9 → AV1 isn't as impressive because the bitrate also increased. What would have really driven the author's point home was if the AV1 stream was higher quality and a lower bitrate than the VP9 stream.

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

#248

Post by asutekku »

clouddrover wrote: post #200
echelon wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video isn't superior for sharable, loopable images. Try downloading a video from a popular social network. Can you easily do it without inspecting the source? If it's a two second clip, does it loop on your system? Or does the video player exit / end the stream? This is absolutely a problem that GIF doesn't have. > You don't need a proprietary player to loop a video > You can save any video file just like a gif. Exce…

> Can you easily do it without inspecting the source? Yes, I use Page Info (Tools menu -> Page Info) in Firefox. It lists all the media assets on the page and you can download the one you want. The inability to right-click and save a video is less a problem with the video file itself and more a problem with how the page is structured. You can have the same right-click problem with GIFs depending on where they appear…

... That’s far from what I would call an acceptable ux.

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

#249

Post by est31 »

qalmakka wrote: post #191
niftich wrote: post #179

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.

Instead of HEIF one could use AVIF which is patent-unencumbered: https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-avif/

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

#250

Post by erichocean »

tdb7893 wrote: post #29
antirez wrote: post #20

GIFs are still here because people make art with it, in some form. This is how we got still GIFs around, not because we needed to transfer videos. The idea of replacing everything based on technical superiority is extremely shortsighted. We need more humanists in computing.

You can make the same art with other formats. I'm not sure exactly what your point is here.

You can write the same algorithm in some other language. I'm not sure what exactly your point is here. /sarc
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