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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

#81

Post by pjc50 »

numlock86 wrote: post #67
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…

> It may take longer to load, but I can have 100+ GIFs playing at once with no impact to my CPU. I remember this myth, saying that the first moon landing required as much computing power (command central, ship etc.) as rendering a GIF. No mention about the resolution, frame speed and so on, though. Hence I think it's a myth. On the other hand you could probably tune those parameters enough to actually make it a true…

GIF is not very CPU-intensive, but I definitely remember systems slow enough that JPEGs loaded at visible speed over a couple of seconds. I also had a Libretto 30 that could play MP3s, but only with the Fraunhofer decoder and not the Winamp one which couldn't quite keep up with realtime.

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

#83

Post by bluedino »

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…

>>I can have 100+ GIFs playing at onee with no impact to my CPU It wasn't that long ago that a page full of emoticons (animated gifs) would bring a computer to it's knees (when posting on vbulletin or something)

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

#84

Post by syphilis2 »

My browser (FF66 Win10) lags and hangs when browsing this site. Also, the AV1 videos have frozen and I can't get them to play again without refreshing. I can recreate both of these bugs by simply changing tabs. Despite that, I'm ready to switch to video too.

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

#86

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

silversconfused wrote: post #40
farisjarrah wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have no problem being fed the fad of the month codec, as long as a reliable fallback is available.

Hold up, we have those for codec's now? Gee, what's next? Linux distro flavors?

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

#88

Post by silversconfused »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #65
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.

Aside from the size issue, GIF only support 256 colors per frame, so photos and real-life videos almost always have visible dithering artifacts. It's a terribly shitty format, but remains popular because it has universal support and so works with no fuss. We need to get the same amount of support for a better format.

Unless you're willing to backport that support to 10+ year old browsers, it will never happen. You need UNIVERSAL support. Edge cases, corner cases, and plain old "bad ideas" included. This is what the incumbent has going for it.

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

#89

Post by TheCoreh »

pavlov wrote: post #50
FreeFull wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps audio-free videos should be allowed in tags

I'd support that (as if anyone's asking me...) on three conditions: 1) Maximum duration of, say, 10 s (with mandatory looping) 2) Maximum display size of, say, 25% viewport area 3) Browsers must enforce "Click to stop" on these "video-img" elements even if there are other DOM elements on top.

If none of these conditions apply to gifs, why should they apply to videos in img tags?

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

#90

Post by Dylan16807 »

tjoff wrote: post #75
masklinn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. They have. The "gifs" on reddit or imgur are generally h.264, even if you upload gifs they'll get converted to video files. TFA's just saying those should be switched to AV1, or an AV1 source should be provided. I'm not sure they're right though. h.264 will be larger and of lower quality espec…

... and it is a complete mess. They try to to decide which format you want based on your client. Thus if you hotlink an image directly you don't know anymore if it will load or even if the format the next guy will see has sound. I've linked "images" purely because of the sound and other viewers got a version without it. And many times it just won't load. This is supposed to be simple...

Some sites (looking at you, imgur) are really bad about that.

Doing what this article recommends shouldn't cause those problems, though. The only notable risk is linking a format that mobile can't load.

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