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Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

dannyguo.com

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Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#201

Post by blihp »

jjcm wrote: post #103
FalconSensei wrote: post #58

I already said that before and I'll do it again: it won't work until we make videos act like gifs, which act like images. The video per se won't loop if I save it in my computer or phone. I can't drag and drop, right click, long tap. To have anything replacing gif you need THE EXACT SAME BEHAVIOUR, EVERYWHERE. It doesn't matter for the consumer whose fault it is: encoding, the app, how the file is created. The user u…

I think there's a chance this can happen when AV1 starts to gain adoption. Webp had a chance - you can have well encoded, looping video in a .webp container that operates exactly like an image. The issue was lack of adoption - it never took hold due to Apple not adopting it in their ecosystem. AV1 has support from every major player in tech, and .avif images support gif functionality just fine. Until that happens tho…

I suspect any future attempt/format may have a similar problem. Has anything changed re: Apple preferring to stick with MPEG LA endorsed formats?

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#202

Post by carapace »

chaosbutters314 wrote: post #108
FalconSensei wrote: post #58

I already said that before and I'll do it again: it won't work until we make videos act like gifs, which act like images. The video per se won't loop if I save it in my computer or phone. I can't drag and drop, right click, long tap. To have anything replacing gif you need THE EXACT SAME BEHAVIOUR, EVERYWHERE. It doesn't matter for the consumer whose fault it is: encoding, the app, how the file is created. The user u…

I'm glad someone else thinks like this, the other devs on my team get so caught up on the little things in the application we are building and all this little crap the user won't care about if it doesn't work as they expect. I end up being the only person saying "If I was the user, I'd expect this. And if I was doing this, I expect this behavior". Instead, they act as if the user has a PhD in cs, and instead, the use…

I only ever got to participate in live user testing once. We shelled out for the room with the one-way mirror and everything. Watching normal people use our thing was most excruciating and educational. We were literally hopping up and down on our side of the glass, hooting and shouting. It was brutal.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#203

Post by debaserab2 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #144
mydongle wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with this pro-user sentiment, you best believe I will be there in 5 years to complain about all the unbelievable choices made by software developers for the sake of pleasing the lowest common denominator users who just gets used to whatever UI they learned first and now all future programmers are forced to copy that UI, no matter how bad it is for future generations to come.

Well, that doesn't apply here because gifs still have better UX than video for many use cases. Nobody wants to use video as it's implemented right now for reaction gifs. Browsers and platform defaults could go a long way to improve video UX but they don't. Not having to open my network tab to save video would be a place to start. Being able to right-click to copy/paste them would be another. These aren't "lowest comm…

And as long as licensed video codecs are a thing, the UX for gif's will always be better.

Yes, videos lose quality and sound when converted to a gif. They also lose proprietary encoding and all their metadata (including licensing information).

This makes gif's infinitely more transmittable on the web.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#205

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

WalterBright wrote: post #95
jedberg wrote: post #85

Not sure why he put this at the end: > One final note: according to Wilhite, GIF is pronounced with a soft “G,” like “jif.” That settles the never-ending debate for me. Now all he's done is make 1/2 of the population immediately discount everything else he said, regardless of its merit.

>> One final note: according to Wilhite, GIF is pronounced with a soft “G,” like “jif.” That would be correct if GIF stood for "Gerbil Interchange Format" rather than "Graphics Interchange Format".

It's correct because the original developers said so.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#206

Post by jedberg »

gifnamething wrote: post #199
jedberg wrote: post #85

Not sure why he put this at the end: > One final note: according to Wilhite, GIF is pronounced with a soft “G,” like “jif.” That settles the never-ending debate for me. Now all he's done is make 1/2 of the population immediately discount everything else he said, regardless of its merit.

I'm not sure why anyone else thinks they have a say in how to pronounce a name. I hope I don't meet anyone who tells me I'm pronouncing mine incorrectly.

Gif isn't a name, it's an acronym. The creator of an acronym doesn't get to decide how it's pronounced -- it follows the rules of standard english if it's an acronym of english words. Yes english has a lot of edge cases, but it has defaults too.

In this case, english rules dictate that any word that starts with "gif" is a hard g sound. You will not find an english word that starts with "gif" with a soft g.

The only reason there is a controversy at all is because the creator insists on his incorrect pronunciation with a soft g. If he wanted a soft g, it should have been a "jif".

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#207

Post by eitland »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #170
jjcm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a chance this can happen when AV1 starts to gain adoption. Webp had a chance - you can have well encoded, looping video in a .webp container that operates exactly like an image. The issue was lack of adoption - it never took hold due to Apple not adopting it in their ecosystem. AV1 has support from every major player in tech, and .avif images support gif functionality just fine. Until that happens tho…

>The issue was lack of adoption - it never took hold due to Apple not adopting it in their ecosystem It's not just Apple, webp files can't even be opened by Photoshop. You're basically making proprietary Chrome image files if you actually use that format.

Why is this?

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#208

Post by Kliment »

drenvuk wrote: post #147
chrismorgan wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Users have bandwidth limits. (And videos are big.) 2. Users hate constant motion on the page. (And videos have constant motion.) 3. So users stop videos from playing automatically. 4. Publishers want the video to play, so they stop using a proper video format, and use the GIF format, which produces even bigger files, and prevents users from stopping the motion. Something’s horribly broken here. I really want brows…

Producers don't care, they want you to see their content if you go to their site.

If they're willing to abuse technology to ruin my day, I don't see why their opinion should have any weight.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#209

Post by ryukafalz »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #170
jjcm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a chance this can happen when AV1 starts to gain adoption. Webp had a chance - you can have well encoded, looping video in a .webp container that operates exactly like an image. The issue was lack of adoption - it never took hold due to Apple not adopting it in their ecosystem. AV1 has support from every major player in tech, and .avif images support gif functionality just fine. Until that happens tho…

>The issue was lack of adoption - it never took hold due to Apple not adopting it in their ecosystem It's not just Apple, webp files can't even be opened by Photoshop. You're basically making proprietary Chrome image files if you actually use that format.

Ehh... Firefox can open them just fine, as can GIMP, as can (apparently) my OS's image thumbnailer. (Though oddly enough not my OS's image viewer.) Support isn't universal, but it's certainly not a proprietary Chrome format.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#210

Post by lossygif »

http://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle/ https://kornel.ski/lossygif

you can also just compress user uploaded gifs serverside. but the top commenter is right, gifs are great because of they're functionality and simplicity.

the better thing would be for the w3c and browsers vendors can get their act together (spoiler: they won't) and do things like make gif20, finish svg2, implement svgfonts, implement complete css3 specs, if you want to preserve functionality and usabilty of graphic assets on the web while reducing their bandwidth.

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