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Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

dannyguo.com

31–40 of 242 posts

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#32
The article compares a single img tag with a single gif src url to a video tag with 2 child nodes linking to 2 separate files encoded with 2 different ways, as mp4 and webm.

That’s already more than 2x as much work to post an animated image, not to mention limited support for transparency and needing to pay some extra attention for seamless looping.

Video on the web needs to mature quite a bit more.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#33
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s really an application issue, but god damn is it an annoying one.

Gifs (and videos that people call gifs) wouldn’t be what they are today if it weren’t for their ease of copying/saving and pasting/uploading to somewhere else, which you could similarly call an application feature. So this application issue with video (as implemented in this article) is almost certainly what will stop gifs from being replaced.

This only worked properly in Firefox since 2016 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664717 so that's probably not it.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#34
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s really an application issue, but god damn is it an annoying one.

Gifs (and videos that people call gifs) wouldn’t be what they are today if it weren’t for their ease of copying/saving and pasting/uploading to somewhere else, which you could similarly call an application feature. So this application issue with video (as implemented in this article) is almost certainly what will stop gifs from being replaced.

But it's being done above the format level entirely.

Every browser that can decode video has a "Copy Video URL" context menu item. It's just that the websites hide it to discourage hotlinking

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#35
post #26

Serving videos instead of GIFs is easy to do now with the HTML video element, which is supported almost universally I respectfully disagree. Loading videos instead of GIFs is easy to do now. Serving videos is a nightmarish mess of trying to match divergent, incompatible, sometimes patent-encumbered "standards" against an ever-changing range of browser support taking into account the hardware capabilities of a vast ra…

VP8 in a WebM container is pretty much the lowest bar for most browser support, and comes with no licensing requirements. I'm not disagreeing with the comment about "nightmarish mess". It indeed is one, specially when it comes user-uploaded content.

Isn’t it mp4? That is pretty universal and displays well in all platforms. Webm isn’t that ubiquitous in support.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#37
post #35
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VP8 in a WebM container is pretty much the lowest bar for most browser support, and comes with no licensing requirements. I'm not disagreeing with the comment about "nightmarish mess". It indeed is one, specially when it comes user-uploaded content.

Isn’t it mp4? That is pretty universal and displays well in all platforms. Webm isn’t that ubiquitous in support.

Most common MP4 formats are patent encumbered. I guess you could serve DivX;-) format and be in the clear as far as that goes?

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#38
post #26

Serving videos instead of GIFs is easy to do now with the HTML video element, which is supported almost universally I respectfully disagree. Loading videos instead of GIFs is easy to do now. Serving videos is a nightmarish mess of trying to match divergent, incompatible, sometimes patent-encumbered "standards" against an ever-changing range of browser support taking into account the hardware capabilities of a vast ra…

VP8 in a WebM container is pretty much the lowest bar for most browser support, and comes with no licensing requirements. I'm not disagreeing with the comment about "nightmarish mess". It indeed is one, specially when it comes user-uploaded content.

unfortunately, mpeg4/h264 is still only common denominator for browser support, because of Apple Safari.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#39
post #35
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VP8 in a WebM container is pretty much the lowest bar for most browser support, and comes with no licensing requirements. I'm not disagreeing with the comment about "nightmarish mess". It indeed is one, specially when it comes user-uploaded content.

Isn’t it mp4? That is pretty universal and displays well in all platforms. Webm isn’t that ubiquitous in support.

MPEG LA holids patents for mp2/mp4/hevc/h.264. I'm not sure what the licensing terms are, but they are not as liberal as VP8.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#40
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is JPEG the de facto lossy compression format for photos? It always bugs me that video formats get something new every 5 or so years yet photos are in JPEGs for decades.

iOS has been slowly making HEIF more common. It’s just that it takes a long time for the entire tooling chain to support it.

Even Safari doesn't support HEIF though (even on iOS), so for web, it's not even there yet.
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