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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 inf

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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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...

afiori 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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...