Hundreds of millions of devices support GIF and JPEG and will never support patent-encumbered processing-intensive newcomers.
Why BPG will replace GIFs and more
21–30 of 121 posts
Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
GIF is extremely lossy for this use case since they can't do 24-bit color. In addition to being unnecessarily gigantic, animated GIFs also look terrible for just about anything that isn't pixel art. GIF itself is a lossless format, but when you use it for stuff like this the whole process is super lossy.
Perhaps GIF wasn't intended for this use case? Oh right, it wasn't. There are plenty of video formats that are. That doesn't make them "GIF replacement".
Whether GIF was intended for this usecase or not (it wasn't, the GIF spec specifically calls it out as a bad idea [0]), it's overwhelmingly what it's used for in practice. Therefore anything that can displace GIF in this space is a replacement.
[0] https://www.w3.org/Graphics/GIF/spec-gif89a.txt
> Animation - The Graphics Interchange Format is not intended as a platform for animation, even though it can be done in a limited way.
Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more
#23Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more
#24> By Fabrice Bellard
nough said, I'm sold!
Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more
#25How can a lossy format replace a lossless format? The author clearly doesn't know what they're talking about.
BPG has a lossless mode.
Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
GIF is extremely lossy for this use case since they can't do 24-bit color. In addition to being unnecessarily gigantic, animated GIFs also look terrible for just about anything that isn't pixel art. GIF itself is a lossless format, but when you use it for stuff like this the whole process is super lossy.
Perhaps GIF wasn't intended for this use case? Oh right, it wasn't. There are plenty of video formats that are. That doesn't make them "GIF replacement".
GIF has already been replaced by better formats. The one exception to this is short, looping videos, where GIF still enjoys enormous popularity.
So yeah, GIF wasn't intended for this use case. But that's the use case it has right now.
Go back 20 years, and "GIF" means a 256-color losslessly compressed image, occasionally animated. Today, "GIF" nearly always means a short looping video with horrible compression.
Practically speaking, today, "GIF replacement" means doing a better job for short, looping videos, because that's all GIF has left at this point.
Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more
#27Implementing an image format via JS is cool, but I'm not sure what the use-case is for this format that isn't already covered (and supported in browsers) by other formats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG should be a better alternative for GIF-like images (including transparency and low bit depth), and MP4 + H.265 should be the alternative for movie-like content. For most platforms, you might even get decoding support in hardware, so performance and battery life shouldn't be anything but better vs this.
Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more
#28Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more
#29Note that BPG is based on HEVC still frames, and may be more patent-emcubered than current alternatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Portable_Graphics#Paten...
Why not another BPG-like based on VP9, then?
I think one based on VP10 is a possibility, since the Alliance for Open Media now includes all major browser makers except Apple, and a bunch of big websites.
Currently the members seem to be working on converging VP10, Daala and Thor tech in the video realm but I'd guess images might be on their radar too.
Re: Why BPG will replace GIFs and more
#30I found the BPG was stuttering.
Tried to just view the BPG alone by right clicking and "view image". it just gave a static png though. Amusingly the URL of the static picture is amazingly long (at least thousands of bytes) and does nasty things to my computer when I tried to copy it.
Edit: It actually appears to be the images encoded since it starts with "data:image/png;base64"