131–140 of 205 posts
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Except for being free, WebM was not a "superior compression format" to H264 last I heard. Has it changed recently?
I think it all but caught up lately in VP8 vs h.264 performance. Google kept improving VP8 performance. However, webm has also added VP9 support recently, which is clearly superior.
Not so superior...
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We have a format for something like that — WebP. As a bonus, it's less processor-intensive, which makes it suited for things like tiling backgrounds, or embedding many of them on a page — a huge problem for MP4s that anyone who's enabled the on their services has no doubt already discovered.
Indeed. I'm disappointed that the new generation of codecs (h264/webM) has won out for small internet videos because they seem to be processing-power beasts. Full-screen mpeg-2 (DVDs) was doable with a $40 device over a decade ago. Video compression is definitely a worse-is-better space.
As all current platforms, including mobile because of dedicated hardware, have absolutely no problem with playing H.264 video while bandwidth is still a scarce resource I think it is logical and wise that H.264 won over MPEG-2 or other older codecs.
Don't forget that larger file size also might mean more power consumption (storage and radio need to be active longer) even if less CPU is consumed.
"With all these improvements, Imgur will now denote converted MP4s with a .gifv extension. The intention is to signal to users throughout the Internet that these links will feature a GIF experience that incorporates all the current and future enhancements made through Project GIFV. Imgur plans to submit an accompanying specification to relevant standards organizations before the end of the year." This is bizarre. GIF…
About 8 billion people, culture is everything to people compared to file format specifications.
Acts like a GIF, talks like a GIFs, it's a GIF(V)!
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No, probably not anyone who is reading hackernews, but imgur has a much wider audience. GIFV will help communicate 2 things: 1) this file is audio free 2)this file is safe (people don't generally worry about getting a virus from a gif).
Actually, exploiting bugs in image parsers has been a classic vector. Certainly tiff, jpeg and BMP to my memory. When i worked at symbian we had an svg parser vulnerability that went underreported. And given the slew of bugs Google keep finding fixing in libraries like ffmpeg, there are likely lots of bugs lurking in something as complex as an MP4 player...
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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.
We don't need to tie this behavior to a new video extension or a specific video format. A more sensible approach would be to allow video sources in and restrict their profile to GIF-like behavior. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=895131
People like this format. GIF, gyfcat, Vine, and now this. Instagram and WebM on 4chan also have things keyed to this behavior. But the thing that GIF has on all of them is that it works everywhere. It plays in a browser, in an email, on the desktop, in an MMS message, etc..
We need a full stop replacement for the GIF that uses a modern encoder.
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There are a lot of uses for dumb, audio-free video files. Web forums, for instance. You can allow users to embed them without worrying about 100 different auto-playing videos with sound on your page. Plenty of ways to implement that and I'm not sure this is the best approach, but it's not just "worse video". More features is worse , not better, a lot of the time. Like when people used to build entire websites in Flas…
>entire websites in Flash before the iPhone's lack of flash player finally made them stop I have a setting flipped in Chrome such that I have to click to enable each plugin on a page. This made me realize that the iPhone sadly didn't stop all such website builders (rare as it is to encounter one now.)
I know there is no way that site is being redone, and they're now completely at the mercy of Yelp.
Now, I understand that this is an issue with iOS and not with Imgur, but honestly, GIFV is not a great improvement, technologically or otherwise.
Also, note that most GIF's on Imgur end up there as screen caps of various web videos. In other words the process is now M4V -> GIF -> M4V. Instead, Imgur could just build tools for better short video creation that they could then host.
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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.
Move on to what? The annihilation of firefox through a cheap licensing move?
Apple is never going to support WebM. This kills the format. There are hundreds of millions of devices that can hardware decode MPEG4 than can't for WebM. Nay, billions of devices. Of course WebM is always just around the corner, but this has just led to a stagnation where the scourge of animated GIFs reigned supreme.
What is the innovation here? Four mistakes in spelling 'webm'?
Can't we just all settle for .webm? The cancerous patented MP4/H264 combination must die.