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Can we talk about the awful video compression on Twitter and how the only workaround to Twitter shitting on your video is to submit it as a perfectly crafted gi

Can we talk about the awful video compression on Twitter and how the only workaround to Twitter shitting on your video is to submit it as a perfectly crafted gif which takes dozens of trial and error iterations to produce? It's 2019. Every other media sharing site on the planet is friendlier to preserving video quality than Twitter is. For a platform which carries so much programming\technical content, having video compression set to 'DESTROY ANY KIND OF PIXEL LEVEL DETAIL' is super painful. I can't be the only user that stopped uploading video content because of the effort involved in hand-crafting Twitter gifs. Everything that can be achieved with these specially produced gifs could also be achieved by simply upping video quality for small videos. Plus removing the insanity of creating such content. Plus actually saving bandwidth since gifs are super wasteful. There's a whole category of articles about how to 'trick' Twitter into preserving the quality of your image or video upload. That's insane. Define and publish some compression specs at which you won't destroy the content.

danso 8y ago
Sorry, but how is it possible to create "perfectly created gif" to replace the video you're uploading? IIRC, the largest gifs Twitter seems to support is 15MB. You're having problems with seconds of video?
- bicubic 8y ago
  Yes, seconds of video. That's the price you have to pay on Twitter to not have your content turned into a blob of smudge. 15mb is the total bucket size you need to fill. How you fill that bucket depends on: Length Palette Dithering settings The actual amount of pixels changed in the segment of video you're showing You then embark on a journey to take your original 10 second video segment and produce the ideal 15mb gif by tweaking all of the above. Or you just upload the whole 10 second video to imgur and get back an 8mb pixel perfect mp4. https://twitter.com/DeusVerus/status/1004657962663596032 https://twitter.com/DeusVerus/status/1004657962663596032 https://twitter.com/spetulla/status/1072604230681329665 https://twitter.com/spetulla/status/1072604230681329665 https://twitter.com/mbostock/status/1064241248049881088 https://twitter.com/mbostock/status/1064241248049881088 https://twitter.com/veltman/status/1068226765632327680 https://twitter.com/veltman/status/1068226765632327680 All of these posts are hand-crafted gifs designed to work around Twitter's video compression.
midgetjones 8y ago
The funniest and most depressing part of all this is that twitter 'gifs' are mp4s
- vardump 8y ago
  What video compression they use inside mp4 container?
  - midgetjones 8y ago
    Picked a "gif" at random: Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media / Version 2 Codec ID : mp42 File size : 1.61 MiB Duration : 4s 890ms Overall bit rate : 2 766 Kbps Encoded date : UTC 2018-06-07 09:34:57 Tagged date : UTC 2018-06-07 09:34:57 Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : Baseline@L3.0 Format settings, CABAC : No Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 4s 890ms Bit rate : 2 764 Kbps Width : 720 pixels Height : 414 pixels Display aspect ratio : 1.739 Frame rate mode : Variable Frame rate : 33.538 fps Original frame rate : 1 000.000 fps Minimum frame rate : 33.333 fps Maximum frame rate : 1 000.000 fps Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.276 Stream size : 1.61 MiB (100%) Title : Twitter v1.0-757770b7c8e9d79a526cdff77e74666386274fdf Writing library : x264 core 148 Encoding settings : cabac=0 / ref=1 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x1:0x111 / me=hex / subme=2 / psy=0 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=0 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=1 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=0 / weightp=0 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc=crf / mbtree=0 / crf=20.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=2:1.00 Encoded date : UTC 2018-06-07 09:34:57 Tagged date : UTC 2018-06-07 09:34:57
SimeVidas 8y ago
The videos look pretty bad when uploaded to Twitter from a Switch (e.g., https://mobile.twitter.com/crotchmedia/status/1075473589783183366 https://mobile.twitter.com/crotchmedia/status/10754735897831...). So this is Twitter’s fault, huh?
dawnerd 8y ago
I just wish they’d up the file size and length maximums. Kind of amazed they don’t as I know quite a few outlets that don’t like using YouTube and would gladly host it on twitter. It’d also help keep people on twitter longer = more ads.

danso 8y ago

Sorry, but how is it possible to create "perfectly created gif" to replace the video you're uploading? IIRC, the largest gifs Twitter seems to support is 15MB. You're having problems with seconds of video?

bicubic 8y ago
Yes, seconds of video. That's the price you have to pay on Twitter to not have your content turned into a blob of smudge. 15mb is the total bucket size you need to fill. How you fill that bucket depends on: Length Palette Dithering settings The actual amount of pixels changed in the segment of video you're showing You then embark on a journey to take your original 10 second video segment and produce the ideal 15mb gif by tweaking all of the above. Or you just upload the whole 10 second video to imgur and get back an 8mb pixel perfect mp4. https://twitter.com/DeusVerus/status/1004657962663596032 https://twitter.com/DeusVerus/status/1004657962663596032 https://twitter.com/spetulla/status/1072604230681329665 https://twitter.com/spetulla/status/1072604230681329665 https://twitter.com/mbostock/status/1064241248049881088 https://twitter.com/mbostock/status/1064241248049881088 https://twitter.com/veltman/status/1068226765632327680 https://twitter.com/veltman/status/1068226765632327680 All of these posts are hand-crafted gifs designed to work around Twitter's video compression.

midgetjones 8y ago

The funniest and most depressing part of all this is that twitter 'gifs' are mp4s

vardump 8y ago
What video compression they use inside mp4 container?
- midgetjones 8y ago
  Picked a "gif" at random: Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media / Version 2 Codec ID : mp42 File size : 1.61 MiB Duration : 4s 890ms Overall bit rate : 2 766 Kbps Encoded date : UTC 2018-06-07 09:34:57 Tagged date : UTC 2018-06-07 09:34:57 Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : Baseline@L3.0 Format settings, CABAC : No Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 4s 890ms Bit rate : 2 764 Kbps Width : 720 pixels Height : 414 pixels Display aspect ratio : 1.739 Frame rate mode : Variable Frame rate : 33.538 fps Original frame rate : 1 000.000 fps Minimum frame rate : 33.333 fps Maximum frame rate : 1 000.000 fps Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.276 Stream size : 1.61 MiB (100%) Title : Twitter v1.0-757770b7c8e9d79a526cdff77e74666386274fdf Writing library : x264 core 148 Encoding settings : cabac=0 / ref=1 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x1:0x111 / me=hex / subme=2 / psy=0 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=0 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=1 / lookahead_threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=0 / weightp=0 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc=crf / mbtree=0 / crf=20.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=2:1.00 Encoded date : UTC 2018-06-07 09:34:57 Tagged date : UTC 2018-06-07 09:34:57

SimeVidas 8y ago

The videos look pretty bad when uploaded to Twitter from a Switch (e.g., https://mobile.twitter.com/crotchmedia/status/1075473589783183366 https://mobile.twitter.com/crotchmedia/status/10754735897831...). So this is Twitter’s fault, huh?

dawnerd 8y ago

I just wish they’d up the file size and length maximums. Kind of amazed they don’t as I know quite a few outlets that don’t like using YouTube and would gladly host it on twitter. It’d also help keep people on twitter longer = more ads.