9 ms·

At this point, killing GIF is a UX problem, not a format problem. I've talked about this before [0], but the big problem for me is that video is just difficult

by Ezhik 7y ago

At this point, killing GIF is a UX problem, not a format problem. I've talked about this before [0], but the big problem for me is that video is just difficult as hell. Compared to a GIF, it is just that much harder to save a video on a phone, and then upload it the same way as an image. Try to save a "GIF" from Twitter or from GIPHY - it's a /huge/ pain. Whatever the GIF killer is will need to pass the right click test - I need to be able to just right click and save it. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14181158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14181158

iainmerrick 7y ago
Yes. Just one problem I discovered recently is that no other format does looping properly. With a GIF, you can right-click and save it, and all the looping info is inside the file. The quality is crappy, but it just works. With all “proper” video formats, looping info is metadata, stored separately. You can’t even go for something slightly more modern, animated PNGs, because there are warring formats and very few tools that support them.
- afiori 7y ago
  wasn't webp supposed to have GIF like animations? As far as i know I have never seen one in the wild, just webm. I think the problem is that GIFs are images and so displayed as such with little concept of play-control. A video format communicate that you might want to pause for example. I believe a GIF-killer will need to be considered an image as a format.
  - iainmerrick 7y ago
    Yes, agreed. That lack of play-control is both a weakness and a strength of GIF. The strength is misunderstood and underrated by those who think videos should replace all usage of GIFs.
    - Kaiyou 7y ago
      Play control isn't impossible for GIF. I'm using sxiv for viewing images, which is as minimal as it gets, but it does have pause, single step forward and single step backward for GIF.
      - iainmerrick 7y ago
        Who said it was impossible?
  - chriswarbo 7y ago
    > GIFs are images and so displayed as such with little concept of play-control > A video format communicate that you might want to pause for example. > I believe a GIF-killer will need to be considered an image as a format. If we consider animated GIF to be an image, then the distinction between "image" and "video" is pretty arbitrary. I would say the distinction isn't inherent to the format either. It's inherent to the HTML tag. There's no reason we couldn't support `<img src="foo.av1" />` or `<video src="bar.gif" />` with the appropriate UI for each. I actually think this is a symptom of something bigger: browsers (and most other applications) shouldn't care about media formats at all; that's a low-level concern of the OS/stdlib. The Datatypes system of AmigaOS (and later BeOS) is an example of how this could be improved.
- paavoova 7y ago
  Looping is up to the video player, not the format or container. What "video formats" have looping as metadata? Gifs only have a loop flag so static images can be displayed instead of looped indefinitely as video.
  - echelon 7y ago
    GIF lets you control the loop count and playback speed. It's baked in when authored and is useful. You can simply save the file and expect it to work everywhere - dead simple. The Internet has voted in favor of looping, "GIF-like" moving images. Platforms try to emulate this with proprietary video players. Some have sound (wanted or not), some of the video players prohibit copying, and none of the files work as simply as GIF for sharing. We need something more modern than GIF, but that has playability baked in. Something that browsers treat as a moving image and not a video.
    - paavoova 7y ago
      > You can simply save the file and expect it to work everywhere I don't quite follow. This is because the gif is decoded and played. No different than a video. You don't need a proprietary player to loop a video, you just go back to the start of the video. For streaming, this is only problematic for large videos that can't be cached, but the same applies to large gifs. Browsers can loop video, it's just a right-click setting. HTML5 can loop video, allowing sites to serve video in e.g. a banner, replacing gifs. You can save any video file just like a gif. > Something that browsers treat as a moving image and not a video. The entire point of deprecating gifs is because video is superior. Gif as an image format being able to specify frame duration and looping is hardly a noteworthy feature.
      - echelon 7y ago
        Video isn't superior for sharable, loopable images. Try downloading a video from a popular social network. Can you easily do it without inspecting the source? If it's a two second clip, does it loop on your system? Or does the video player exit / end the stream? This is absolutely a problem that GIF doesn't have. > You don't need a proprietary player to loop a video > You can save any video file just like a gif. Except social networks force you to use a locked down or DRM'd player. You can get chunks of the video sometimes. Your non-tech friends are out of luck. > you just go back to the start of the video "just". Yeah, how many players support that out of the box? Yours might, but there are many more that do not.
- Andrex 7y ago
  Animated PNG support was shipped in Chromium, the last major hold out, two years ago: https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/6691520493125632 https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/6691520493125632 This means that once the new Chromium-based Edge ships, all major browsers will have support: https://www.caniuse.com/#feat=apng https://www.caniuse.com/#feat=apng
- nessunodoro 7y ago
  For reference, pyAPNG works great for creating animated PNGs. If you have a sequence of static PNGs, you can assemble them with APNG.from_files() [1]. Example looping APNG (346K) [2], with alpha channel (456K) [3]. 1. https://pypi.org/project/apng/ https://pypi.org/project/apng/ 2. https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/4Q-yKMEPwm2higaB8Wj1pNII60jbtfrr2Z4FnXNuuWw.png https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/4Q-yKMEPwm2higaB8Wj1pNII60j... 3. https://a.thumbs.redditmedia.com/kSUouIZtNICOcPf4v9F8fPOrpAeqrZaRYxQlsOpX484.png https://a.thumbs.redditmedia.com/kSUouIZtNICOcPf4v9F8fPOrpAe...
lowken10 7y ago
The issue is that very often the "good enough" solution is what sticks. Gif are good enough and the world is not in a hurry to adopt a replacement.
the8472 7y ago
To my knowledge you cannot save a gif from twitter. They do not provide the source data, the actual pixel-exact gif file. Only some recompressed video.
ehsankia 7y ago
Right, in my opinion for this to work, we need an AV1 derivative that acts as a GIF: 1. Similar looping behavior 2. No audio 3. Can be put in an <img> tag You should be able to save the file like you would a gif, and viewers should also show it as they would a gif (not a video).
- niftich 7y ago
  Given the current direction of the industry, the most likely candidate for this in the not-so-distant future is HEIF, which has support for an image-sequence [1]. HEIF is an ISOBMFF (aka Quicktime/MP4 container)-derived container format for images, image sequences, and transformations. Its most visible use right now is Apple Live Photos, but various use-cases exist [2]. OS and application support is increasing. Work is ongoing on defining AV1-encoded frames as a payload in HEIF [3]. [1] https://nokiatech.github.io/heif/technical.html https://nokiatech.github.io/heif/technical.html [2] https://nokiatech.github.io/heif/examples.html https://nokiatech.github.io/heif/examples.html [2] https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-avif/#av1-image-sequence https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-avif/#av1-image-sequence
  - qalmakka 7y ago
    Which, exactly like GIF in its very beginning, is encumbered by an infinite amount of patents. You can't replace an open format with a patented one; killing video patents is the very reason AV1 exists.
    - clouddrover 7y ago
      Which patents is HEIF itself encumbered by and who runs a patent licensing pool for HEIF?
      - niftich 7y ago
        MPEG tells [1] rightsholders to file Patent Statement and Licensing Declarations to ISO/IEC. ISO/IEC maintains [6] a spreadsheet of received documents and the relevant standards that they concern. Examining that spreadsheet, I found four declarations that concerned the HEIF standard, all four submitted by Nokia Technologies Oy. These documents [2][3][4][5] provide references to patents approved or pending. The patent or patent application numbers, in order of their appearance in these documents: AU 2014255577, CA 2909566, CN 201480034418.2, EP 14785343.6, IN 6931/CHENP/2015, KR 2015-7032685, RU 2015146961, US 14/254120, US 14/617266, WO PCT/FI2016/050063, US 14/618650, WO PCT/FI2016/050064, GB 1418114.3, WO PCT/FI2015/050671, WO PCT/FI2014/050582, US 14/583332, PCT/FI2014/051052, PCT PCT/FI2016/050381, US 15/578288 This is where I'd start. Sources: [1] https://mpeg.chiariglione.org/patents https://mpeg.chiariglione.org/patents [2] https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770791/16231513/2015-12-08_NokiaTechnologiesOy__23008-12.pdf?nodeid=17669592&vernum=-2 https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770... [3] https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770791/16231513/2016-06-13-Nokia_Technology_Oy%282%29_23008-12.pdf?nodeid=17824408&vernum=-2 https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770... [4] https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770791/16231513/2016-09-02_NokiaTechnologiesOy__23008-12.pdf?nodeid=17845333&vernum=-2 https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770... [5] https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770791/16231513/2017-12-19_Nokia_Technologies_Oy_23008-12.pdf?nodeid=19652863&vernum=-2 https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770... [6] https://www.iso.org/iso-standards-and-patents.html https://www.iso.org/iso-standards-and-patents.html
lohszvu 7y ago
Gif was killed a long time ago by webm
- asdff 7y ago
  Last I checked my iPhone can't do webm or webp
  - clouddrover 7y ago
    You can support a variety of formats in Safari using WebAssembly builds of the decoders. WebAssembly for audio and image formats is more than fast enough. It's even fast enough for VP9 video. WebP demo: https://webmproject.github.io/libwebp-demo/webp_wasm/index.html https://webmproject.github.io/libwebp-demo/webp_wasm/index.h... Theora\VP8\VP9\Opus\Vorbis demo: https://brionv.com/misc/ogv.js/demo/ https://brionv.com/misc/ogv.js/demo/ ogv.js on GitHub: https://github.com/brion/ogv.js https://github.com/brion/ogv.js
    - Spivak 7y ago
      Is it really worth it to ship a decoder to every user of your site rather than encode it once on your server? Don't get me wrong, it's a super cool demo but anyone who does this is prod is a little nuts. The exception being a service that's write once read maybe like CCTV cameras.
      - clouddrover 7y ago
        You still encode the file once on the server. The decoder just happens to be implemented in WebAssembly. Wikipedia uses ogv.js. If you've ever played audio or video on Wikipedia in Safari then you've used ogv.js. Some Bach on Wikipedia in Safari: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chromatic_Fantasia_(Bach_BWV_903).ogg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chromatic_Fantasia_(Bach_...
      - d0ugie 7y ago
        It's all gravy, the javascript WebP decoders, until you convert your 20K high res photo site to WebP, then not realizing for a week, scratching your head about the bounce rate spiking, that you're crashing browsers left and right...
tty2300 7y ago
Which is sad because webm in browsers already passes the right click test but websites have started a trend of blocking users from saving content so they choose to share a link instead which brings in more ad views. When I want to copy an image from Instagram I have to use the dev tools to find it.
- _eht 7y ago
  You poor soul.
Razengan 7y ago
Yes. Add this to the list of problems you can't believe we still have to put up with in 2019.
twhb 7y ago
The UX for saving and sharing videos is the same as for images, including right click to save. You and I don't get that UX, though, because Twitter, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and most websites write code to fight off-site sharing and deploy it on their videos but not their images. They skip images presumably because it's easier to bypass there and because everybody knows you're user-hostile when you break image UX, whereas when you break video UX even HN users blame the browser or operating system. So it's worse than a UX problem, it's a social problem. Maybe as-easy-as-screenshots screen recording would go a long way toward solving it, but we've been beat to it: big tech has bent kernels, operating systems, browsers, and even most nations around the world into collaborating to refuse to take moving screenshots of video files, under the label of DRM. So maybe the root of it all is just timing. Images were added to the web when the web was just a tool, so everybody knew what they were before big tech could set an expectations like that moving an image from memory to disk isn't a normal feature, or that wanting to is controversial, or that doing it might be illegal. Video, though, came at a time when there were big players that knew the stakes and were ready.
- ryanwhitney 7y ago
  > The UX for saving and sharing videos is the same as for images… Minus drag and drop, in browsers at least.
  - soulofmischief 7y ago
    This comment reminded me of Terry Davis, because that's exactly the kind of feature he would have deemed essential in a browser if he'd ever decided to add networking to TempleOS. RIP brother. Videos really should be first-class entities, though. Imagine an OS/browser-level ffmpeg implementation which would allow seamless copy/paste of videos, integrated snipping tools both for cropping and time, color adjustment, etc. with automatic imgur-style hosting of your newly edited video just a button-click away.
    - yrro 7y ago
      The dream of QuickTime back in the 90s
adrianN 7y ago
I can right-click and save videos just fine. You can too, try it here: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/GregariousDevotedArachnid-mobile.mp4 https://thumbs.gfycat.com/GregariousDevotedArachnid-mobile.m... You just have to write some Greasemonkey script to circumvent all the crap that the video-serving websites do to prevent you from getting the normal video-in-a-browser UI. It's harder when you get this link https://gfycat.com/GregariousDevotedArachnid https://gfycat.com/GregariousDevotedArachnid
- karrotwaltz 7y ago
  On your second link I can directly right click and save, on others (like Twitter) I just have to shift right click to bypass the blocking scripts. (Firefox desktop with multiple privacy extensions)
Kaiyou 7y ago
There's already apng (animated png) which is like GIF, but with the quality of PNG. No one really seems to care, though.
- ksec 7y ago
  I wonder why, apart from IE not supporting it? Which we just serve gif to IE user.
ZoomZoomZoom 7y ago
As if developers weren't actively trying to kill regular images in the web! More and more sites serve me some blobs via some pointless js scripts, forcing me to use developer tools to just save the original image. Combined with lazy loading it results in some frustrating UX.
NikkiA 7y ago
All of the clips in this article have 'Save Video As...' options for me... ?

by Ezhik 7y ago

iainmerrick 7y ago

Yes. Just one problem I discovered recently is that no other format does looping properly. With a GIF, you can right-click and save it, and all the looping info is inside the file. The quality is crappy, but it just works. With all “proper” video formats, looping info is metadata, stored separately. You can’t even go for something slightly more modern, animated PNGs, because there are warring formats and very few tools that support them.

afiori 7y ago
wasn't webp supposed to have GIF like animations? As far as i know I have never seen one in the wild, just webm. I think the problem is that GIFs are images and so displayed as such with little concept of play-control. A video format communicate that you might want to pause for example. I believe a GIF-killer will need to be considered an image as a format.
- iainmerrick 7y ago
  Yes, agreed. That lack of play-control is both a weakness and a strength of GIF. The strength is misunderstood and underrated by those who think videos should replace all usage of GIFs.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    Play control isn't impossible for GIF. I'm using sxiv for viewing images, which is as minimal as it gets, but it does have pause, single step forward and single step backward for GIF.
    - iainmerrick 7y ago
      Who said it was impossible?
- chriswarbo 7y ago
  > GIFs are images and so displayed as such with little concept of play-control > A video format communicate that you might want to pause for example. > I believe a GIF-killer will need to be considered an image as a format. If we consider animated GIF to be an image, then the distinction between "image" and "video" is pretty arbitrary. I would say the distinction isn't inherent to the format either. It's inherent to the HTML tag. There's no reason we couldn't support `<img src="foo.av1" />` or `<video src="bar.gif" />` with the appropriate UI for each. I actually think this is a symptom of something bigger: browsers (and most other applications) shouldn't care about media formats at all; that's a low-level concern of the OS/stdlib. The Datatypes system of AmigaOS (and later BeOS) is an example of how this could be improved.
paavoova 7y ago
Looping is up to the video player, not the format or container. What "video formats" have looping as metadata? Gifs only have a loop flag so static images can be displayed instead of looped indefinitely as video.
- echelon 7y ago
  GIF lets you control the loop count and playback speed. It's baked in when authored and is useful. You can simply save the file and expect it to work everywhere - dead simple. The Internet has voted in favor of looping, "GIF-like" moving images. Platforms try to emulate this with proprietary video players. Some have sound (wanted or not), some of the video players prohibit copying, and none of the files work as simply as GIF for sharing. We need something more modern than GIF, but that has playability baked in. Something that browsers treat as a moving image and not a video.
  - paavoova 7y ago
    > You can simply save the file and expect it to work everywhere I don't quite follow. This is because the gif is decoded and played. No different than a video. You don't need a proprietary player to loop a video, you just go back to the start of the video. For streaming, this is only problematic for large videos that can't be cached, but the same applies to large gifs. Browsers can loop video, it's just a right-click setting. HTML5 can loop video, allowing sites to serve video in e.g. a banner, replacing gifs. You can save any video file just like a gif. > Something that browsers treat as a moving image and not a video. The entire point of deprecating gifs is because video is superior. Gif as an image format being able to specify frame duration and looping is hardly a noteworthy feature.
    - echelon 7y ago
      Video isn't superior for sharable, loopable images. Try downloading a video from a popular social network. Can you easily do it without inspecting the source? If it's a two second clip, does it loop on your system? Or does the video player exit / end the stream? This is absolutely a problem that GIF doesn't have. > You don't need a proprietary player to loop a video > You can save any video file just like a gif. Except social networks force you to use a locked down or DRM'd player. You can get chunks of the video sometimes. Your non-tech friends are out of luck. > you just go back to the start of the video "just". Yeah, how many players support that out of the box? Yours might, but there are many more that do not.
Andrex 7y ago
Animated PNG support was shipped in Chromium, the last major hold out, two years ago: https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/6691520493125632 https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/6691520493125632 This means that once the new Chromium-based Edge ships, all major browsers will have support: https://www.caniuse.com/#feat=apng https://www.caniuse.com/#feat=apng
nessunodoro 7y ago
For reference, pyAPNG works great for creating animated PNGs. If you have a sequence of static PNGs, you can assemble them with APNG.from_files() [1]. Example looping APNG (346K) [2], with alpha channel (456K) [3]. 1. https://pypi.org/project/apng/ https://pypi.org/project/apng/ 2. https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/4Q-yKMEPwm2higaB8Wj1pNII60jbtfrr2Z4FnXNuuWw.png https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/4Q-yKMEPwm2higaB8Wj1pNII60j... 3. https://a.thumbs.redditmedia.com/kSUouIZtNICOcPf4v9F8fPOrpAeqrZaRYxQlsOpX484.png https://a.thumbs.redditmedia.com/kSUouIZtNICOcPf4v9F8fPOrpAe...

lowken10 7y ago

The issue is that very often the "good enough" solution is what sticks. Gif are good enough and the world is not in a hurry to adopt a replacement.

the8472 7y ago

To my knowledge you cannot save a gif from twitter. They do not provide the source data, the actual pixel-exact gif file. Only some recompressed video.

ehsankia 7y ago

Right, in my opinion for this to work, we need an AV1 derivative that acts as a GIF: 1. Similar looping behavior 2. No audio 3. Can be put in an <img> tag You should be able to save the file like you would a gif, and viewers should also show it as they would a gif (not a video).

niftich 7y ago
Given the current direction of the industry, the most likely candidate for this in the not-so-distant future is HEIF, which has support for an image-sequence [1]. HEIF is an ISOBMFF (aka Quicktime/MP4 container)-derived container format for images, image sequences, and transformations. Its most visible use right now is Apple Live Photos, but various use-cases exist [2]. OS and application support is increasing. Work is ongoing on defining AV1-encoded frames as a payload in HEIF [3]. [1] https://nokiatech.github.io/heif/technical.html https://nokiatech.github.io/heif/technical.html [2] https://nokiatech.github.io/heif/examples.html https://nokiatech.github.io/heif/examples.html [2] https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-avif/#av1-image-sequence https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-avif/#av1-image-sequence
- qalmakka 7y ago
  Which, exactly like GIF in its very beginning, is encumbered by an infinite amount of patents. You can't replace an open format with a patented one; killing video patents is the very reason AV1 exists.
  - clouddrover 7y ago
    Which patents is HEIF itself encumbered by and who runs a patent licensing pool for HEIF?
    - niftich 7y ago
      MPEG tells [1] rightsholders to file Patent Statement and Licensing Declarations to ISO/IEC. ISO/IEC maintains [6] a spreadsheet of received documents and the relevant standards that they concern. Examining that spreadsheet, I found four declarations that concerned the HEIF standard, all four submitted by Nokia Technologies Oy. These documents [2][3][4][5] provide references to patents approved or pending. The patent or patent application numbers, in order of their appearance in these documents: AU 2014255577, CA 2909566, CN 201480034418.2, EP 14785343.6, IN 6931/CHENP/2015, KR 2015-7032685, RU 2015146961, US 14/254120, US 14/617266, WO PCT/FI2016/050063, US 14/618650, WO PCT/FI2016/050064, GB 1418114.3, WO PCT/FI2015/050671, WO PCT/FI2014/050582, US 14/583332, PCT/FI2014/051052, PCT PCT/FI2016/050381, US 15/578288 This is where I'd start. Sources: [1] https://mpeg.chiariglione.org/patents https://mpeg.chiariglione.org/patents [2] https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770791/16231513/2015-12-08_NokiaTechnologiesOy__23008-12.pdf?nodeid=17669592&vernum=-2 https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770... [3] https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770791/16231513/2016-06-13-Nokia_Technology_Oy%282%29_23008-12.pdf?nodeid=17824408&vernum=-2 https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770... [4] https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770791/16231513/2016-09-02_NokiaTechnologiesOy__23008-12.pdf?nodeid=17845333&vernum=-2 https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770... [5] https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770791/16231513/2017-12-19_Nokia_Technologies_Oy_23008-12.pdf?nodeid=19652863&vernum=-2 https://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2122/3770... [6] https://www.iso.org/iso-standards-and-patents.html https://www.iso.org/iso-standards-and-patents.html

lohszvu 7y ago

Gif was killed a long time ago by webm

asdff 7y ago
Last I checked my iPhone can't do webm or webp
- clouddrover 7y ago
  You can support a variety of formats in Safari using WebAssembly builds of the decoders. WebAssembly for audio and image formats is more than fast enough. It's even fast enough for VP9 video. WebP demo: https://webmproject.github.io/libwebp-demo/webp_wasm/index.html https://webmproject.github.io/libwebp-demo/webp_wasm/index.h... Theora\VP8\VP9\Opus\Vorbis demo: https://brionv.com/misc/ogv.js/demo/ https://brionv.com/misc/ogv.js/demo/ ogv.js on GitHub: https://github.com/brion/ogv.js https://github.com/brion/ogv.js
  - Spivak 7y ago
    Is it really worth it to ship a decoder to every user of your site rather than encode it once on your server? Don't get me wrong, it's a super cool demo but anyone who does this is prod is a little nuts. The exception being a service that's write once read maybe like CCTV cameras.
    - clouddrover 7y ago
      You still encode the file once on the server. The decoder just happens to be implemented in WebAssembly. Wikipedia uses ogv.js. If you've ever played audio or video on Wikipedia in Safari then you've used ogv.js. Some Bach on Wikipedia in Safari: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chromatic_Fantasia_(Bach_BWV_903).ogg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chromatic_Fantasia_(Bach_...
    - d0ugie 7y ago
      It's all gravy, the javascript WebP decoders, until you convert your 20K high res photo site to WebP, then not realizing for a week, scratching your head about the bounce rate spiking, that you're crashing browsers left and right...

tty2300 7y ago

Which is sad because webm in browsers already passes the right click test but websites have started a trend of blocking users from saving content so they choose to share a link instead which brings in more ad views. When I want to copy an image from Instagram I have to use the dev tools to find it.

_eht 7y ago
You poor soul.

Razengan 7y ago

Yes. Add this to the list of problems you can't believe we still have to put up with in 2019.

twhb 7y ago

The UX for saving and sharing videos is the same as for images, including right click to save. You and I don't get that UX, though, because Twitter, Google, Facebook, Netflix, and most websites write code to fight off-site sharing and deploy it on their videos but not their images. They skip images presumably because it's easier to bypass there and because everybody knows you're user-hostile when you break image UX, whereas when you break video UX even HN users blame the browser or operating system. So it's worse than a UX problem, it's a social problem. Maybe as-easy-as-screenshots screen recording would go a long way toward solving it, but we've been beat to it: big tech has bent kernels, operating systems, browsers, and even most nations around the world into collaborating to refuse to take moving screenshots of video files, under the label of DRM. So maybe the root of it all is just timing. Images were added to the web when the web was just a tool, so everybody knew what they were before big tech could set an expectations like that moving an image from memory to disk isn't a normal feature, or that wanting to is controversial, or that doing it might be illegal. Video, though, came at a time when there were big players that knew the stakes and were ready.

ryanwhitney 7y ago
> The UX for saving and sharing videos is the same as for images… Minus drag and drop, in browsers at least.
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  This comment reminded me of Terry Davis, because that's exactly the kind of feature he would have deemed essential in a browser if he'd ever decided to add networking to TempleOS. RIP brother. Videos really should be first-class entities, though. Imagine an OS/browser-level ffmpeg implementation which would allow seamless copy/paste of videos, integrated snipping tools both for cropping and time, color adjustment, etc. with automatic imgur-style hosting of your newly edited video just a button-click away.
  - yrro 7y ago
    The dream of QuickTime back in the 90s

adrianN 7y ago

I can right-click and save videos just fine. You can too, try it here: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/GregariousDevotedArachnid-mobile.mp4 https://thumbs.gfycat.com/GregariousDevotedArachnid-mobile.m... You just have to write some Greasemonkey script to circumvent all the crap that the video-serving websites do to prevent you from getting the normal video-in-a-browser UI. It's harder when you get this link https://gfycat.com/GregariousDevotedArachnid https://gfycat.com/GregariousDevotedArachnid

karrotwaltz 7y ago
On your second link I can directly right click and save, on others (like Twitter) I just have to shift right click to bypass the blocking scripts. (Firefox desktop with multiple privacy extensions)

Kaiyou 7y ago

There's already apng (animated png) which is like GIF, but with the quality of PNG. No one really seems to care, though.

ksec 7y ago
I wonder why, apart from IE not supporting it? Which we just serve gif to IE user.

ZoomZoomZoom 7y ago

As if developers weren't actively trying to kill regular images in the web! More and more sites serve me some blobs via some pointless js scripts, forcing me to use developer tools to just save the original image. Combined with lazy loading it results in some frustrating UX.

NikkiA 7y ago

All of the clips in this article have 'Save Video As...' options for me... ?