It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#1

Post by singhkays » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video
singhkays.com

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#2

Post by simlevesque » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:49 PM UTC

The article claims that AV1 works since FF 65 but the examples do not work on FF 66.

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#3

Post by tetrisgm » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:51 PM UTC

I'd love to AV1 to become the standard, but as far as I've seen, it's just not implemented anywhere, and the spec wasn't 100% final. I was messing with ffmpeg a couple months ago, and it didn't look like a straightforward option to convert either. I'd say it's not quite time we replace GIFs with it.

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#4

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

simlevesque wrote: post #2

The article claims that AV1 works since FF 65 but the examples do not work on FF 66.

Can also confirm does not work on firefox 66 for me; chromium does work though.

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#5

Post by davidcollantes » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

It seems VP9 and AV1 do not play on macOS Safari.

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#6

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

Why no h265? I suspect it's similar to VP9 in quality, but h264 is pretty old at this point (nowhere near as old as GIFs of course).

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#7

Post by silversconfused » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

The code shows the first three video formats being available and prioritized before gif, but the sample videos do not include gifs. It'd be nice to see the quality difference between the format that is being discouraged and the format being encouraged.

Personally, I love gifs. They work with no fuss.

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#8

Post by vortico » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

tetrisgm wrote: post #3

I'd love to AV1 to become the standard, but as far as I've seen, it's just not implemented anywhere, and the spec wasn't 100% final. I was messing with ffmpeg a couple months ago, and it didn't look like a straightforward option to convert either. I'd say it's not quite time we replace GIFs with it.

libaom support in ffmpeg is still experimental.

    ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v libaom-av1 -strict experimental out.webm

Encoding on the CPU is less than 1fps now. rav1e is a bit faster. Hardware encoder support might be available on CPUs in 2020.

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#9

Post by farisjarrah » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

silversconfused wrote: post #7

The code shows the first three video formats being available and prioritized before gif, but the sample videos do not include gifs. It'd be nice to see the quality difference between the format that is being discouraged and the format being encouraged. Personally, I love gifs. They work with no fuss.

I like GIFs too, they do indeed work well on all platforms. But I agree with OP, in that we should be switching over to more sustainable standards. Think about the energy savings we could get across the web if even 25% of GIFs were converted to newer and more efficient formats.

Re: It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

#10

Post by wlesieutre » Thu, May 09, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #6

Why no h265? I suspect it's similar to VP9 in quality, but h264 is pretty old at this point (nowhere near as old as GIFs of course).

H264 has the advantage of very widespread decoding hardware.

H265 is getting there, but in the meantime you'd be killing a lot of batteries with software decoding.

This page claims 78% supported on iOS and 57% on Android as of last August: https://www.scientiamobile.com/growing-support-of-hevc-or-h-...