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Introducing GIFV

imgur.com

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Re: Introducing GIFV

#61
post #4

Is this what gfycat does?

That site actually uses the superior VP8 compression format in a WebM container.

Pedantry: WebM is not a compression format. It is a container format. At the moment it appears to support VP8 video, VP9 video, Vorbis audio, and Opus audio; there is no single form of compression that WebM implies.

Re: Introducing GIFV

#63
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers should display GIFVs without transport controls (unlike ), and ignore any audio tracks that are included - basically construct a limited MP4 profile and handle it appropriately. It's a useful construct imho.

Ah, that actually makes some sense, as far as a file format specification. So GIFV would offer a subset of the functionality of a typical video file format (most notably, absence of sound). Although I would think it would make more sense to just strip out the audio, rather than instruct browsers to ignore any audio tracks.

One would assume the implementation does that too, for file size anyway, but it might be nice to tell the viewer that there is no need to show the controls.

Re: Introducing GIFV

#64

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet: why is imgur allowed to use copyrighted material to promote this new feature? I'm pretty certain they didn't get permission to use those clips from Tron or Star Wars. Does the fact that they were created by a user somehow give them immunity?

I think existing copyright law allows this kind of usage. Please refer to Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

Re: Introducing GIFV

#65

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet: why is imgur allowed to use copyrighted material to promote this new feature? I'm pretty certain they didn't get permission to use those clips from Tron or Star Wars. Does the fact that they were created by a user somehow give them immunity?

No immunity if you know it's copyrighted material and don't immediately remove.

Re: Introducing GIFV

#67
post #13

Am I misunderstanding something here? I don't see anything other than an .mp4 video served via a tag from a URL that ends in .gifv. I was interested in seeing how it worked to look into supporting it for a mime type detection library I've written. The blog post mentions submitting a specification to the relevant standards organization. Are they planning on creating a new mp4 ftyp and registering a mimetype with IANA?

Yes, why are they calling mp4 files gifv files? Is it somehow cooler? Can I start serving .html files as .awesome files? And .js as .kicka$$ files? and .mp3 as .boomin'? GET "index.awesome" at this rate, why not re-write all of html so it's cooler? => => =>

Can I start serving .html files as .awesome files?

Sure, go ahead. Extensions in a URL have little to do with the actual type of content, and .html has long been abandoned by dynamic systems, who originally went to extensions being an implementation detail, and on many current systems being a lie (e.g. the .aspx extension that actually runs a PHP page that returns an HTML5 file).

They're using a URL extension to signal to their system what to do with the file, which in the case of GIFV is to wrap an MP4 video in a simple HTML5 container. Eh.

Re: Introducing GIFV

#69
post #8

Can't we just all settle for .webm? The cancerous patented MP4/H264 combination must die.

Can't we just all settle for .webm?

This debate is partly why the web is overrun with enormous animated GIFs.

It seems pretty clear that webm isn't going to be widely supported. Time to move on.

Re: Introducing GIFV

#70

I don't know if its just me, but the GIFVs embedded on the page dont load for me, unless I click on them to open them in a page on their own, and the second one doesn't play even in this case. Firefox 32.0.3 on Linux

That's probably because Firefox on OS X (32.0.3) doesn't yet handle H.264, which is what these GIFV files really are. FF on Windows (32.0.2) does support H.264, and the GIFV files play as expected. IIRC, FF on Android was the first version to get H.264 support, which it's had for some time now. EDIT: You can check codec support for your current browser+platform at YouTube's HTML5 page, below. I briefly dug around in…

You're right, the page you linked shows that my browser doesn't have support for H.264... though then I'm confused as to why the first GIFV loads for me when I open it on a separate page...
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