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It's time to replace GIFs with AV1 video

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

#51

Post by zsiec »

BlackLotus89 wrote: post #12
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.

It's implemented nearly everywhere (firefox, ffmpeg, edge, chrome, opera, vlc,...) and the spec is 100% final. Problem is that (and now the everywhere gets weak) android didn't implement it yet (afaik) and some packaged versions of the software haven't got it enabled or are just out of date. What we can get from the article thought is: why isn't gif replaced by webm/vp9 yet? Can be encoded in no time and is actually…

> why isn't gif replaced by webm/vp9 yet?

Apple has significant market penetration, and you can't get VP9 to easily work in safari/iOS/tvOS

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

#52

Post by masklinn »

FreeFull wrote: post #32
niftich wrote: post #23

AV1 is an open and free format, but if people really wanted to replace GIFs they could've done it with H.264 or VP9 or VP8. Notwithstanding any issues about video codec support in browsers, GIFs will continue to have value until browser-vendors, spec-writers, and webmasters accidentally or deliberately coalesce around a sane ruleset for embedded motion picture completely devoid of audio . Today, browser-makers have c…

Perhaps audio-free videos should be allowed in tags

Audio-free videos are often allowed to autoplay (though you may need to flag them as muted as well). TFA'a video autoplay just fine in both Safari and Firefox.

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

#53

Post by nine_k »

acdha wrote: post #38

It's telling that the author doesn't list all of the file sizes. The GIFs are gigantic but the AV1 files are LARGER than either the H.264 or VP9 versions in every example. If we wanted to replace GIFs you'd want to go with something closer to a comparable level of support and at this scale there's no reason to use a format with no hardware support and limited client support in general: https://caniuse.com/#feat=mpeg4…

Do you remember that time [1] when GIFs had a patented algorithm, and suddenly the the patent holder decided to enforce it more strictly? This is how GIFs were massively replaced with PNGs, except for the animated. PNG support sucked at the time, too (see e.g. IE6). By now it's far superior to GIF in every way.

I think there is a bit of a parallel here. H.264 and WebM may be brilliant codecs from the engineering POV, but they are somehow encumbered [2]. This may end up in obvious legal problems; if possible, these should be avoided early on, by not investing the content in them where we can.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIF#Unisys_and_LZW_patent_enfo...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM#Licensing

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

#54

Post by masklinn »

izzydata wrote: post #33

The most important part of GIFs for me is that they behave like images in browsers. They are always auto-playing with no concept of play and pause. You can drag and drop them from a browser to your desktop to save them. You can save an entire page and have all the image files save with it. I've never had this work for webm or other video formats. You could even argue that GIFs not being a video with no video decoding…

> The most important part of GIFs for me is that they behave like images in browsers. They are always auto-playing with no concept of play and pause. You can drag and drop them from a browser to your desktop to save them. You can save an entire page and have all the image files save with it. I've never had this work for webm or other video formats.

The saving bit is the only part which doesn't work right with videos AFAIK. Sound-less (/muted) videos can autoplay and loop, and there's no controls unless you ask for them (via the `controls` attribute) or bring your own.

The examples in the article (the scenes are videos) autoplay, loop and don't have control in either Firefox or Safari.

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

#55

Post by izzydata »

masklinn wrote: post #54
izzydata wrote: post #33

The most important part of GIFs for me is that they behave like images in browsers. They are always auto-playing with no concept of play and pause. You can drag and drop them from a browser to your desktop to save them. You can save an entire page and have all the image files save with it. I've never had this work for webm or other video formats. You could even argue that GIFs not being a video with no video decoding…

> The most important part of GIFs for me is that they behave like images in browsers. They are always auto-playing with no concept of play and pause. You can drag and drop them from a browser to your desktop to save them. You can save an entire page and have all the image files save with it. I've never had this work for webm or other video formats. The saving bit is the only part which doesn't work right with videos…

I understand that they can be made to autoplay with no controls, but I don't even want the possibility of them being paused. This way the format has no choice but to behave as expected across everything.

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

#56

Post by PhasmaFelis »

izzydata wrote: post #33

The most important part of GIFs for me is that they behave like images in browsers. They are always auto-playing with no concept of play and pause. You can drag and drop them from a browser to your desktop to save them. You can save an entire page and have all the image files save with it. I've never had this work for webm or other video formats. You could even argue that GIFs not being a video with no video decoding…

Animated gifs are compressed, and do require decoding. Hell, so do non-animated gifs. Since animation was added in the '90s, GIF is basically just a really inefficient (but extremely well-supported) video format.

I agree that there won't be wide adoption of AV1s until it can transparently be interacted with just like gifs are now.

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

#57

Post by masklinn »

nine_k wrote: post #53
acdha wrote: post #38

It's telling that the author doesn't list all of the file sizes. The GIFs are gigantic but the AV1 files are LARGER than either the H.264 or VP9 versions in every example. If we wanted to replace GIFs you'd want to go with something closer to a comparable level of support and at this scale there's no reason to use a format with no hardware support and limited client support in general: https://caniuse.com/#feat=mpeg4…

Do you remember that time [1] when GIFs had a patented algorithm, and suddenly the the patent holder decided to enforce it more strictly? This is how GIFs were massively replaced with PNGs, except for the animated. PNG support sucked at the time, too (see e.g. IE6). By now it's far superior to GIF in every way. I think there is a bit of a parallel here. H.264 and WebM may be brilliant codecs from the engineering POV,…

> PNG support sucked at the time, too (see e.g. IE6). By now it's far superior to GIF in every way.

IIRC the stuff which broke in IE6 were features GIFs didn't support at all (translucence and gamma correction).

For GIF replacement you'd use palettes and binary transparency, and it was supported just fine since IE4.

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

#58

Post by PhasmaFelis »

izzydata wrote: post #55
masklinn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most important part of GIFs for me is that they behave like images in browsers. They are always auto-playing with no concept of play and pause. You can drag and drop them from a browser to your desktop to save them. You can save an entire page and have all the image files save with it. I've never had this work for webm or other video formats. The saving bit is the only part which doesn't work right with videos…

I understand that they can be made to autoplay with no controls, but I don't even want the possibility of them being paused. This way the format has no choice but to behave as expected across everything.

There's nothing about allowing play/pause that prevents videos from behaving exactly like gifs. I've seen browsers with play/pause options for gifs, even.

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

#59

Post by paavoova »

zsiec wrote: post #51
BlackLotus89 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's implemented nearly everywhere (firefox, ffmpeg, edge, chrome, opera, vlc,...) and the spec is 100% final. Problem is that (and now the everywhere gets weak) android didn't implement it yet (afaik) and some packaged versions of the software haven't got it enabled or are just out of date. What we can get from the article thought is: why isn't gif replaced by webm/vp9 yet? Can be encoded in no time and is actually…

> why isn't gif replaced by webm/vp9 yet? Apple has significant market penetration, and you can't get VP9 to easily work in safari/iOS/tvOS

But why is this tolerated, for lack of a better word? There's no barrier to adding support, a decoder ships with ffmpeg. Youtube has been serving webm/vp9 video for years, so does that mean VP9 Youtube is unavailable on Apple platforms?

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

#60

Post by errantspark »

You can pry my GIFs from my cold dead hands.

Aesthetically speaking GIFs have a character that you gotta jump through a lot of hoops to approximate with another format.

In addition to that they function everywhere, always autoplay, can't have annoying audio, and support transparency, these are all important features that nothing else on the 'market' can match.

I'm aware that there is lossless animated WebP with transparency, and I can encode a low-color animation into one of those for something functionally identical to a GIF, excepting the fact that it won't be supported anywhere except a recent Chrome.

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