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Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

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Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#81

Post by egfx »

FalconSensei wrote: post #69
manigandham wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can, and they do. This article shows you an example at the end. What's the issue?

tried to drag and drop and didn't work. Also, if I save to share later, it's not going to work, and I would need to do the same things the author did to make it work. It's not guaranteed that it will work properly (with auto loop) everywhere. And if you consider browsers/extensions might block auto-playing videos in the future... gif just works. Drag and drop anywhere, any browser, any app, and it works. (Ok, almost…

Sadly it would be great if it were true but the finer details are that you cannot today drag and drop a gif from a website into another one or copy it to your clipboard and paste it elsewhere on the web. Even though it’s in the W3C clipboard specs https://www.w3.org/TR/clipboard-apis/#reading-from-clipboard, Chrome doesn’t support it. I tried to implement this but it will only show one frame and convert it into a static image and drop the transparent pixels. You can save it directly to your computer though.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#82

Post by Mindwipe »

worble wrote: post #76
drenvuk wrote: post #65

One important thing that was not mentioned in the article: gifs automatically play and are not easily stopped. Videos have more knobs on the client side to tweak whether it plays or not. If I use a gif, I know with great certainty that unless all images on the client are blocked they are going to see my animated content. There are tons of extensions and browser features out there that attempt to stop that feature fro…

Good? Should the user not be able to decide how something plays on their own machine?

It's about defaults.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#83

Post by coronadisaster »

FalconSensei wrote: post #58

I already said that before and I'll do it again: it won't work until we make videos act like gifs, which act like images. The video per se won't loop if I save it in my computer or phone. I can't drag and drop, right click, long tap. To have anything replacing gif you need THE EXACT SAME BEHAVIOUR, EVERYWHERE. It doesn't matter for the consumer whose fault it is: encoding, the app, how the file is created. The user u…

> The video per se won't loop if I save it in my computer or phone

it does for me with VLC (it is dependent on your player if you save it to your computer)

But yeah, I can't right click on a video to save it. Got to use youtube-dl for that...

> THE EXACT SAME BEHAVIOUR, EVERYWHERE.

no sound?

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#84

Post by tasty_freeze »

egfx wrote: post #60

Hold the mic drop. Those that claim videos are superior over GIF's will never understand. The only benefit that a video tag has over a gif is a smaller file size. Animation's and meme's, cinimigraphics and simulations are more than simply video. How about for all other animated graphics? And file size is increasingly becoming less and less of a factor at all. (disclosure: I built https://gif.com.ai )

As someone who frequently works from a hotspot, where 1GB of data costs $5 - $10 per GB (depending if I load up when it is on sale), smaller file size saves me money, and pages load faster.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#85

Post by jedberg »

Not sure why he put this at the end:

> One final note: according to Wilhite, GIF is pronounced with a soft “G,” like “jif.” That settles the never-ending debate for me.

Now all he's done is make 1/2 of the population immediately discount everything else he said, regardless of its merit.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#86

Post by kadoban »

nikanj wrote: post #75
m463 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly. gif is a choice about the limitations of what can happen. A gif will play and repeat with NO SOUND POSSIBLE.

Imagine a browser prompt for ”This site would like to play audio” alá ”This site would like to send you notifications” Too bad that would break Youtube, so Chrome will never deliver it

If the browser has a memory per-site it doesn't break youtube. It could easily be made to work.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#87

Post by ken »

egfx wrote: post #60

Hold the mic drop. Those that claim videos are superior over GIF's will never understand. The only benefit that a video tag has over a gif is a smaller file size. Animation's and meme's, cinimigraphics and simulations are more than simply video. How about for all other animated graphics? And file size is increasingly becoming less and less of a factor at all. (disclosure: I built https://gif.com.ai )

Not just smaller file size. Drastically smaller file size. I've never been on a network so fast that I couldn't appreciate a 97% savings in bandwidth usage.

A sufficiently large quantitative change becomes a qualitative one. This is one of those times.

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#88

Post by tenryuu »

zozbot234 wrote: post #3

No thanks, my "This Site Under Construction" pixel art would look awful as a video. And last I checked, video didn't even support transparency!

There's always going to be a case of when using the gif file format is perhaps the best choice for the job. Like all things considered, a limited palette, reasonable canvas size, the use of a transparency bit instead of a channel. You still have a chance to use an animated gif that's smaller than both the webm and webp variants. Because while it still is possible to create a lossless webp file, the codec is completely different and will store data significantly different, and in the certain use cases, can be less effecient

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#89

Post by ngoel36 »

I use GIFs because I want videos that act like images, not videos. GIFs I can copy & paste, and I know that they'll infinitely loop without ever showing a play/pause button.

Yes, videos are smaller, but I'm unfortunately stuck with GIFs until videos work well in Google Slides and iMessage (which also means I'm also stuck with Google Slides presentations always on the verge of crashing...)

Re: Serve Videos Instead of GIFs

#90

Post by manigandham »

FalconSensei wrote: post #69
manigandham wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can, and they do. This article shows you an example at the end. What's the issue?

tried to drag and drop and didn't work. Also, if I save to share later, it's not going to work, and I would need to do the same things the author did to make it work. It's not guaranteed that it will work properly (with auto loop) everywhere. And if you consider browsers/extensions might block auto-playing videos in the future... gif just works. Drag and drop anywhere, any browser, any app, and it works. (Ok, almost…

Video as a file usually works, it's the presentation/player part that is entirely dependent on whatever application and OS you're using to view it. Most messaging apps now support video pretty easily so there's some progress being made.
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