Gifski: Optimized GIF Encoder • Hacker News Board

Re: Gifski: Optimized GIF Encoder

#11

Post by sandreas » Tue, May 21, 2024, 1:24 PM UTC

cornstalks wrote: post #7

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #4

While Gifski is fantastic, I'd really like to know what kind of tech https://gifs.com uses. Their GIFs are really high quality and small in size. I thought they were using Gifski but I'm not sure about it.

Are they actually GIFs? Some websites use looping videos and call them GIFs, even though they’re H.264 in MP4 or something like that.

Aka "gifs with sound" - I always asked myself who came up with this absurd term ;)

Re: Gifski: Optimized GIF Encoder

#12

Post by dspillett » Tue, May 21, 2024, 1:32 PM UTC

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #4

While Gifski is fantastic, I'd really like to know what kind of tech https://gifs.com uses. Their GIFs are really high quality and small in size. I thought they were using Gifski but I'm not sure about it.

Playing with the quality options with Gifski can yield a significant drop in size sometimes without much drop in quality (sometimes no noticeable drop in quality unless you really look). Perhaps gifs.com are using the same (or similar) algorithm with more size-optimised defaults?

Re: Gifski: Optimized GIF Encoder

#13

Post by armada651 » Tue, May 21, 2024, 1:33 PM UTC

Rperry2174 wrote: post #5

I've tried an absurd amount of video-to-gif tools and Gifski somehow is orders of magnitude better quality than all of them

Gifski does two things that most video-to-gif tools generally don't do:

1. It uses a unique color palette for each frame rather than using one global color palette for all frames.

2. It takes advantage of the fact that pixels from previous frames can be retained and used as part of the next frame even if the colors from those pixels are no longer part of the color palette. This is the main trick gifski uses to get more than 256 colors in a frame.

On top of that gifski uses pngquant for color quantization (converting to 256 colors) which is extremely good at its job in its own right.

Re: Gifski: Optimized GIF Encoder

#14

Post by sorenjan » Tue, May 21, 2024, 1:39 PM UTC

While on the subject of gifs, I'd like to recommend ScreenToGif. As the name suggests it supports screen recording, but the editor is nice for other gifs as well. It's easy to remove duplicate frames, change timing for all or some frames, etc. It can use ffmpeg and gifski for the gif encoding.

https://www.screentogif.com/

Also, I just learnt this, gifski has integrated gifsicle for lossy gif compression.

Re: Gifski: Optimized GIF Encoder

#15

Post by mrbluecoat » Tue, May 21, 2024, 1:55 PM UTC

Like Ethernet, as long as the two commandments of "Does it work?" and "Is it secure?" pass, people will keep the default.

P.S. The example gif on their site is gorgeous.

Re: Gifski: Optimized GIF Encoder

#16

Post by DeathArrow » Tue, May 21, 2024, 1:59 PM UTC

I kind of dislike the Gif-ification of the internet. I rather watch video or look at static pictures.

Re: Gifski: Optimized GIF Encoder

#17

Post by kierenj » Tue, May 21, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

"It produces animated GIFs that use thousands of colors per frame." - caught my interest.

I googled, and saw that one technique for this is layering multiple frames with different palettes and a delay of 0.

Re: Gifski: Optimized GIF Encoder

#18

Post by jimfx » Tue, May 21, 2024, 2:11 PM UTC

mrbluecoat wrote: post #15

Like Ethernet, as long as the two commandments of "Does it work?" and "Is it secure?" pass, people will keep the default. P.S. The example gif on their site is gorgeous.

Pretty sure the gif is from the short movie Cosmo Laundromat by Blender Studios, would definitely recommend giving it a watch:

https://gooseberry.blender.org

Re: Gifski: Optimized GIF Encoder

#19

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer » Tue, May 21, 2024, 2:14 PM UTC

cl3misch wrote: post #9

cornstalks wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they actually GIFs? Some websites use looping videos and call them GIFs, even though they’re H.264 in MP4 or something like that.

webm seems to be the modern replacement for GIFs in browsers. I would suspect gifs.com supports them. Somehow their site is buggy for me atm so I could not test it.

Where are WebM files used? Safari browsers/Apple don't even support it.

Re: Gifski: Optimized GIF Encoder

#20

Post by cornstalks » Tue, May 21, 2024, 2:18 PM UTC

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #19

cl3misch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

webm seems to be the modern replacement for GIFs in browsers. I would suspect gifs.com supports them. Somehow their site is buggy for me atm so I could not test it.

Where are WebM files used? Safari browsers/Apple don't even support it.

They do now. At least on desktop. But it is a more recent feature (within the last few years, I can’t remember when exactly).

MP4 with H.264 is still king for compatibility, but WebM with VP9 isn’t as bespoke as it once was.