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I've never really understood this. I previously had figured that the popularity of GIFs on reddit had been about bandwidth and load times. In that past, video

I've never really understood this. I previously had figured that the popularity of GIFs on reddit had been about bandwidth and load times. In that past, video would be too slow for the rapid novelty stimulus reddit offered, while GIFs were lightening. But now every "GIF" people post is a just full movie, and it loads more slowly than YouTube or other websites that are smartly structured to handle video. Why do they do this?

bpicolo 9y ago
https://blog.imgur.com/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/ https://blog.imgur.com/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/ has some of the details. It definitely makes sense technically. It should in most cases reduce file size, and also allows you to stream content in buffered so you don't need to wait for the whole thing to load for it to play. (Though I believe streaming in gifs is teeeechnically possible? I feel like I saw a demo one time that made a clock by streaming in gif frames)
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  https://hookrace.net/blog/time.gif/ https://hookrace.net/blog/time.gif/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14996715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14996715
- jessriedel 9y ago
  Hey thanks, this is super useful! I still don't quite get it though. I understand that converting huge HD GIFs to a standard video format allows steaming and better compression, but why encourage people to upload it like this rather than just upload videos? The only explanation in the post is "the culture of the GIF now trumps the file format. With Project GIFV, Imgur is reimagining the looping GIF video with all the richness it deserves as a key piece of Internet culture." Is the idea just that people want soundless looping HD video, and they're accustomed to uploading GIFs, so Imgur is going to accommodate them by doing the conversions server-side? I guess this is an explanation, but it's a surprising one. For instance, it doesn't really fit well with the observation that people uploaded GIFs of content that was obviously native video and not connected to internet GIF culture, e.g., sports videos.
  - Strom 9y ago
    Yes it's all about no sound. Everyone likes opening up a bunch of tabs that include auto-playing funny looping videos, but nobody likes auto-playing sound, especially if it overlaps with some other sound.
    - dspillett 9y ago
      I'm not sure if it is Chrome's doing or YouTube's, but if I open a couple of youtube links in tabs (a selection from the "related" list to the right of one I'm currently watching for instance) the clips in the new tabs don't start playing until that tab gains focus. This avoids the auto-playing sound overlapping problem and means you don't miss the start of the clip and drop in part way through. Surely this is the solution to that selection of requirements?
      - Strom 9y ago
        I've noticed the Chrome feature as well. I watch a lot of Twitch streams, and it causes a frustrating experience, albeit with possible workarounds by Twitch. It's that Twitch is about live streams and live chat, but now the video autoplay is delayed until I activate the tab, but chat is still live from the moment I clicked on the link. It basically buffers the stream now, but makes me go out of sync with chat. One alleviator could be Twitch adding a "go live" button that shows up when I'm not live. There are still two classes of problems unaffected by this change. 1) As is popular with gifs, there could very well be multiple of these autoplaying videos on the same page, probably even multiple fitting in the same viewport area. If they had sound, these would interfere with eachother. 2) My understanding is that many listen to music from some source unrelated to the webpage containing these autoplaying videos. So even if there's only one video, its autoplaying sound could easily mix with my tunes. Doing autoplaying sound is hard, but with gaze tracking and knowledge of system sound usage status, I think a pretty good solution is possible.
      - setzer22 9y ago
        That is not an (at least exclusive?) chrome feature, since it happens on Firefox as well.
- wolfgang42 9y ago
  > Though I believe streaming in gifs is teeeechnically possible? I feel like I saw a demo one time that made a clock by streaming in gif frames Maybe this one? (Now dead link): http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/utclock.html http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/utclock.html It's also possible to live-stream video as a GIF(!): gopher://sdf.org/0/users/irl/blog/2012-08-20-streaming-video-over-gopher.md (There was a discussion about this on the gopher-project mailing list in August 2012, but unfortunately GMane is down and I can't provide a link.)
- ramses0 9y ago
  Streaming with gif/jpg has been around since at least 2004[1] and doing some code spelunking mjpeg-tools was installable as a package since 2001[2]. [1]: https://www.linux.com/news/mjpeg-tools https://www.linux.com/news/mjpeg-tools [2]: https://sourceforge.net/p/mjpeg/Code/483/ https://sourceforge.net/p/mjpeg/Code/483/
  - pedrocr 9y ago
    It doesn't have much to do with the gif/jpg formats though, it works with anything. It's just a multipart HTTP response that keeps sending entire new files to replace the previous one. It's not even a jpeg/gif encoding of the differences between frames which would be much more efficient.
stephenboyd 9y ago
The UX of short, looping, soundless, autoplaying videos without player controls is popular. This is partially for simplicity and consistency. Gifs have been less efficient than modern compressed video for a long time.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  And you could plug them into any social media platform that allowed embedded images...
swift 9y ago
The compression MP4 (or any other modern video format) offers is much better than what you can obtain with GIF. MP4s are, perhaps surprisingly, actually the better choice in terms of bandwidth and load time.
- jessriedel 9y ago
  Yes, the same HD content is better as MP4 than GIF, but in the past a "typical" GIF loaded much faster than a typical video. It may even be true (any experts?) that there is an effective lower limit on video quality/framerate for MP4 that prevents it from being the super fast novelty juice that a low-quality GIF could be.
  - stan_rogers 9y ago
    GIF is expensive to transport but cheap to decode. Compression that is in a sense more appropriate for video is the other way around. You may blow through a data cap (people still have these) quickly with animated GIFs, but at least you can put a hundred of them on a web page and have them all play. Eventually. If the downloads ever finish.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      What he is talking about is that back when gifs and videos were both postage stamps pushed over modems, gifs won out. But what changed was that people simply started ripping frames from HD videos, dumping them into gifs and plastering them all over social media. End result was that the gifs ballooned in size because they now held many more images, and each images was much higher resolution. What is more wacky is why gifs returned to fashion at all. They were dead for nearly a decade after people stopped doing their own web sites, and used gifs for things like animated "under construction" signs.
      - wolrah 9y ago
        > What is more wacky is why gifs returned to fashion at all. They were dead for nearly a decade after people stopped doing their own web sites, and used gifs for things like animated "under construction" signs. Same reason that H.264 won the web video standards war: mobile. While mobile browsers can now embed videos reliably that wasn't always the case, and if there's one thing mobile users hate it's links opening other apps. GIFs allowed "video" content to be displayed inline easily in a mostly universal fashion.
my_ghola 9y ago
Part of the popularity of GIFs is that editing them is easier. You can edit them in photoshop or gimp or other image editors, which allow you to use skills learned for editing images (like putting those large black and white texts on top of an image) with it. Video require more technical skill and different software people would have to learn (and time in case you need to edit it frame by frame). What I find nonsensical is that imgur only lets you upload gif which it then converts to video instead of allowing you to upload video directly.
- greggman 9y ago
  FYI you can edit videos in Photoshop and paint on every individual frame. I used they feature back in 2005? (might be bad memory). In any case just opened an mp4 in Photoshop to make sure I wasn't crazy.
  - cflat 9y ago
    cool. painful, but cool.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Most gifs these days is via custom tools that will basically rip the frames and assemble the gif. Just give it a start and stop time, a video file, and grab a latte...
  - nasredin 9y ago
    They are not really "custom". Maximum quality is usually via Video editor: VirtualDub MKVToolNix (cut a scene and convert to uncompressed video) GIF editor (they are still around): Jasc Animation Shop Ulead Gif Animator (open uncompressed video and convert to GIF) And there are a ton of noob-friendly tools that combine the two.
  - setzer22 9y ago
    In case I don't have a source video file, one of my personal favourites is peek [1]. A small gtk app that allows you to quickly record a portion of your screen and save as a GIF. [1]: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=209422 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=209422
dawnerd 9y ago
gif is easy for the kids to say? I don't get it either though.
- moonbug22 9y ago
  I bet they pronounce it wrong though.
  - qbrass 9y ago
    They pronounce the prefix 'giga-' wrong, too.
Sidnicious 9y ago
- Many websites support embedding images in user content but not videos (Gmail, Hangouts, and Stack Overflow, to name a few). - A "minimum viable animated thing" tag is more complicated for videos: <video autoplay loop muted src=video.mp4> - Supporting videos in img tags and sending the right Accept header means that image hosting sites and CDNs can immediately start serving video files to browsers that support them, without the page needing to change. This applies to every hotlinked gif out there.

bpicolo 9y ago

https://blog.imgur.com/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/ https://blog.imgur.com/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/ has some of the details. It definitely makes sense technically. It should in most cases reduce file size, and also allows you to stream content in buffered so you don't need to wait for the whole thing to load for it to play. (Though I believe streaming in gifs is teeeechnically possible? I feel like I saw a demo one time that made a clock by streaming in gif frames)

toomuchtodo 9y ago
https://hookrace.net/blog/time.gif/ https://hookrace.net/blog/time.gif/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14996715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14996715
jessriedel 9y ago
Hey thanks, this is super useful! I still don't quite get it though. I understand that converting huge HD GIFs to a standard video format allows steaming and better compression, but why encourage people to upload it like this rather than just upload videos? The only explanation in the post is "the culture of the GIF now trumps the file format. With Project GIFV, Imgur is reimagining the looping GIF video with all the richness it deserves as a key piece of Internet culture." Is the idea just that people want soundless looping HD video, and they're accustomed to uploading GIFs, so Imgur is going to accommodate them by doing the conversions server-side? I guess this is an explanation, but it's a surprising one. For instance, it doesn't really fit well with the observation that people uploaded GIFs of content that was obviously native video and not connected to internet GIF culture, e.g., sports videos.
- Strom 9y ago
  Yes it's all about no sound. Everyone likes opening up a bunch of tabs that include auto-playing funny looping videos, but nobody likes auto-playing sound, especially if it overlaps with some other sound.
  - dspillett 9y ago
    I'm not sure if it is Chrome's doing or YouTube's, but if I open a couple of youtube links in tabs (a selection from the "related" list to the right of one I'm currently watching for instance) the clips in the new tabs don't start playing until that tab gains focus. This avoids the auto-playing sound overlapping problem and means you don't miss the start of the clip and drop in part way through. Surely this is the solution to that selection of requirements?
    - Strom 9y ago
      I've noticed the Chrome feature as well. I watch a lot of Twitch streams, and it causes a frustrating experience, albeit with possible workarounds by Twitch. It's that Twitch is about live streams and live chat, but now the video autoplay is delayed until I activate the tab, but chat is still live from the moment I clicked on the link. It basically buffers the stream now, but makes me go out of sync with chat. One alleviator could be Twitch adding a "go live" button that shows up when I'm not live. There are still two classes of problems unaffected by this change. 1) As is popular with gifs, there could very well be multiple of these autoplaying videos on the same page, probably even multiple fitting in the same viewport area. If they had sound, these would interfere with eachother. 2) My understanding is that many listen to music from some source unrelated to the webpage containing these autoplaying videos. So even if there's only one video, its autoplaying sound could easily mix with my tunes. Doing autoplaying sound is hard, but with gaze tracking and knowledge of system sound usage status, I think a pretty good solution is possible.
    - setzer22 9y ago
      That is not an (at least exclusive?) chrome feature, since it happens on Firefox as well.
wolfgang42 9y ago
> Though I believe streaming in gifs is teeeechnically possible? I feel like I saw a demo one time that made a clock by streaming in gif frames Maybe this one? (Now dead link): http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/utclock.html http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/utclock.html It's also possible to live-stream video as a GIF(!): gopher://sdf.org/0/users/irl/blog/2012-08-20-streaming-video-over-gopher.md (There was a discussion about this on the gopher-project mailing list in August 2012, but unfortunately GMane is down and I can't provide a link.)
ramses0 9y ago
Streaming with gif/jpg has been around since at least 2004[1] and doing some code spelunking mjpeg-tools was installable as a package since 2001[2]. [1]: https://www.linux.com/news/mjpeg-tools https://www.linux.com/news/mjpeg-tools [2]: https://sourceforge.net/p/mjpeg/Code/483/ https://sourceforge.net/p/mjpeg/Code/483/
- pedrocr 9y ago
  It doesn't have much to do with the gif/jpg formats though, it works with anything. It's just a multipart HTTP response that keeps sending entire new files to replace the previous one. It's not even a jpeg/gif encoding of the differences between frames which would be much more efficient.

stephenboyd 9y ago

The UX of short, looping, soundless, autoplaying videos without player controls is popular. This is partially for simplicity and consistency. Gifs have been less efficient than modern compressed video for a long time.

digi_owl 9y ago
And you could plug them into any social media platform that allowed embedded images...

swift 9y ago

The compression MP4 (or any other modern video format) offers is much better than what you can obtain with GIF. MP4s are, perhaps surprisingly, actually the better choice in terms of bandwidth and load time.

jessriedel 9y ago
Yes, the same HD content is better as MP4 than GIF, but in the past a "typical" GIF loaded much faster than a typical video. It may even be true (any experts?) that there is an effective lower limit on video quality/framerate for MP4 that prevents it from being the super fast novelty juice that a low-quality GIF could be.
- stan_rogers 9y ago
  GIF is expensive to transport but cheap to decode. Compression that is in a sense more appropriate for video is the other way around. You may blow through a data cap (people still have these) quickly with animated GIFs, but at least you can put a hundred of them on a web page and have them all play. Eventually. If the downloads ever finish.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    What he is talking about is that back when gifs and videos were both postage stamps pushed over modems, gifs won out. But what changed was that people simply started ripping frames from HD videos, dumping them into gifs and plastering them all over social media. End result was that the gifs ballooned in size because they now held many more images, and each images was much higher resolution. What is more wacky is why gifs returned to fashion at all. They were dead for nearly a decade after people stopped doing their own web sites, and used gifs for things like animated "under construction" signs.
    - wolrah 9y ago
      > What is more wacky is why gifs returned to fashion at all. They were dead for nearly a decade after people stopped doing their own web sites, and used gifs for things like animated "under construction" signs. Same reason that H.264 won the web video standards war: mobile. While mobile browsers can now embed videos reliably that wasn't always the case, and if there's one thing mobile users hate it's links opening other apps. GIFs allowed "video" content to be displayed inline easily in a mostly universal fashion.

my_ghola 9y ago

Part of the popularity of GIFs is that editing them is easier. You can edit them in photoshop or gimp or other image editors, which allow you to use skills learned for editing images (like putting those large black and white texts on top of an image) with it. Video require more technical skill and different software people would have to learn (and time in case you need to edit it frame by frame). What I find nonsensical is that imgur only lets you upload gif which it then converts to video instead of allowing you to upload video directly.

greggman 9y ago
FYI you can edit videos in Photoshop and paint on every individual frame. I used they feature back in 2005? (might be bad memory). In any case just opened an mp4 in Photoshop to make sure I wasn't crazy.
- cflat 9y ago
  cool. painful, but cool.
digi_owl 9y ago
Most gifs these days is via custom tools that will basically rip the frames and assemble the gif. Just give it a start and stop time, a video file, and grab a latte...
- nasredin 9y ago
  They are not really "custom". Maximum quality is usually via Video editor: VirtualDub MKVToolNix (cut a scene and convert to uncompressed video) GIF editor (they are still around): Jasc Animation Shop Ulead Gif Animator (open uncompressed video and convert to GIF) And there are a ton of noob-friendly tools that combine the two.
- setzer22 9y ago
  In case I don't have a source video file, one of my personal favourites is peek [1]. A small gtk app that allows you to quickly record a portion of your screen and save as a GIF. [1]: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=209422 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=209422

dawnerd 9y ago

gif is easy for the kids to say? I don't get it either though.

moonbug22 9y ago
I bet they pronounce it wrong though.
- qbrass 9y ago
  They pronounce the prefix 'giga-' wrong, too.

Sidnicious 9y ago

- Many websites support embedding images in user content but not videos (Gmail, Hangouts, and Stack Overflow, to name a few). - A "minimum viable animated thing" tag is more complicated for videos: <video autoplay loop muted src=video.mp4> - Supporting videos in img tags and sending the right Accept header means that image hosting sites and CDNs can immediately start serving video files to browsers that support them, without the page needing to change. This applies to every hotlinked gif out there.