AnimGIFs need a better codec

https://pornel.net/efficient-gifs

by robin_reala • 12 years ago

77 39 12 years ago

pornel.net

TheZenPsycho5• 12 years ago

as I've commented before, SVG fits pretty much all those criteria:

- works inside an <img> tag

- works in background: url()

- supports both smil animation and css animation

- supported back to IE10 (with css animations)

- plays automatically in a loop with no play controls

- can embed jpegs, pngs, videos as videostrips or diff images

- can apply alpha transparency via a mask operation

- flexible enough to apply a wide variety of compression techniques including multiple update regions (where gif only supports one rect per frame)

- Controllable via javascript (as long as you trade off putting it in an img tag and use an object tag instead)

previous comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8038838

all that's missing is widely available software to author SVG animations.

TylerE• 12 years ago

This, imo, represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the typical use case.

If posting the image on a typical forum requires more than some sort of [img]http://foohost.com/23452t23t.baz[/img] it's a non-starter.

TheZenPsycho5• 12 years ago

Yes. SVG works in that use case.

with animations.

it does.

I misunderstood nothing.

behold:

http://www.zenpsycho.com/squirrelrun.html

pornel3• 12 years ago

A major use-case is to efficiently play a clip from a video camera, so purely vector animation or a sequence of frames from still images isn't good enough.

I've tested an SVG with an <svg:video> element (http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGTiny12/multimedia.html#restrictedVid...), but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be supported anywhere.

I've also tested an SVG playing video via HTML in a <foreignObject>. In Firefox it does play when the SVG is opened as a standalone file, but not when embedded in <img src>. So close :(

TheZenPsycho5• 12 years ago

sequence of still images from jpeg frames is still an improvement over gif for that usecase. Plus, all the same optimisations (and more) that have been available to gif for that use case are also available to SVG. Just not in any authoring software.

germanforblack• 12 years ago

You could also use <video src="/path/to/vid.mp4" muted loop autoplay>

pornel3• 12 years ago

That's what sites do currently, but it's still not quite there yet, because it requires special markup and doesn't loop when you share the URL directly (I hope the latter can be fixed easily: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1041238 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=395413).

Annoyingly GIF isn't supported as a source in <video> either, which adds extra complexity when you want to provide a proper fallback.

TazeTSchnitzel• 12 years ago

doesn't loop when you share the URL directly

You can deal with that server-side by checking referrers and other headers and serving HTML.

SimeVidas2• 12 years ago

I don’t think the markup for `<video autoplay muted loop>` is an issue. These attributes exist for this use case.

That being said, video in CSS background is a legit feature request.

ahoge• 12 years ago

Some of this is covered by the WebP FAQ:

https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/faq

NVI• 12 years ago

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Supported_...

There isn’t a single video format that is supported by all major browsers.

simoncion2• 12 years ago

Moot decided on webm for 4chan's anigif replacement. If more websites do the same, MSFT and Apple will have their decision made for them.

We need to stop caring about the opinions of companies who aren't interested in helping The Web.

xooyoozoo• 12 years ago

"Helping The Web" in this case would be choosing the video format with the broadest support base... which in this case is H264. The only holdouts are Opera and a couple variants of Firefox. As a bonus, you'd get hardware acceleration in almost all mobile devices and a good chunk of the desktop market.

SquareWheel• 12 years ago

I would be perfectly okay with browsers dropping support for the animated gif. We've had better options for years.

Titanbase2• 12 years ago

I don't have a problem with AnimGIFs. They work fine for their intended purpose.

Interesting side note: I worked at Jasc Software 20 years ago in technical support, helping people with Paint Shop Pro 7 and Animation Shop.

Animation Shop still works great for creating AnimGIFs and PSP7 still works great for a complete 'vector+bitmap' graphics app. It's impressive that some software is so resilient.

pornel3• 12 years ago

If by intended purpose you mean animations like smileys, then yeah, it's OK.

But if you look at imgur.com or Tumblr you'll find GIF is used mostly for video clips and this results in multi-megabyte files with dreadful quality, e.g. http://ministryofgifs.org/

gfycat typically reports 15:1 compression improvement when converting to WebM.

Titanbase2• 12 years ago

Yeah, sometimes video formats are better, but for some purposes AnimGIFs are fine.

How difficult it seems to pick a default codec for the web+mobile web?

EDIT: Looks like everyone is concerned with it being open source, but they don't want to pay for it? Or they can pay for it and get a commercial license. Either way, you should be forced to pay! XD

ajanuary• 12 years ago

The amount of RAM that's required to browse tumblr because of the gifs is slightly insane.

est2• 12 years ago

What's real need to be fixed is how to provide an easy copy-pastable way of viral spreading like GIF.

GIF is popular simply because people can copy it around by 2 clicks. Copying video files is PITA because bullshits like region restrictions, CDN providers, dynamic URLs, etc.

scott_karana2• 12 years ago

That just the thing, though; video file formats do not intrinsically have any of those limitations, which is exactly why he wrote this article: it's a false dichotomy.

Files are just files, and video ones are typically smaller.

Imagine, if you will, a GouTube where animated GIFs were rigorously checked against existing copyrighted material, removed by DMCA requests, hosted around the world. How would it be mechanically different than Youtube, except for changes surrounding the Flash player?

Thusly, imagine Tumblr hosting WebM/H264 files instead of (or in addition to) GIFs. Mechanically identical.

Aardwolf• 12 years ago

On a GIF, you can right click and "save as". So a first step would be to have all browser makers allow this for video files too.

TD-Linux• 12 years ago

You can right click any html5 video and choose Save video as...

est2• 12 years ago

Still, you can't do this

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/an-imessage-prank-every-iphone-ow...

There are so many exceptions when saving a video, like you got only a chunk of a video because video files are segmented in m3u list, or stupid auto-throttling algorithms, or dumb-ass resolution auto-switching.

ZeroGravitas2• 12 years ago

This is one side if it, 4chan's webm is another, various 3rd party hosts, shims and polyfills are in between.

I'd like to see Mozilla and Google capitalize on this to help spread royalty free codecs

How does webm decoded in JavaScript compare with a gif for video? Is there a subset (beyond removing all audio) that could speed thinks up?

derf_• 12 years ago

How does webm decoded in JavaScript compare with a gif for video? Is there a subset (beyond removing all audio) that could speed thinks up?

https://wiki.xiph.org/Ogv.js

jccalhoun• 12 years ago

"AnimGIFs?" Is this a term people really use?

SimeVidas2• 12 years ago

I was confused about that term for a few moments. We should have a standard shorthand for animated GIF. How about aGIF or AGIF?

clarry• 12 years ago

Twitter is listening: http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/sorry-this-gif-is-not-av...

AnimGIFs need a better codec

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