4 ms·

Why use a chart? It's what, four questions? Is it a vector image? -> Use .svg Is it an illustration (bitmap) with transparency (i.e. a cutout of a man) -> Use

Why use a chart? It's what, four questions? Is it a vector image? -> Use .svg Is it an illustration (bitmap) with transparency (i.e. a cutout of a man) -> Use .png Is it animated? -> Use .mp4 and fallback to .gif Is it a photo? -> Use .jpg and compress as much as possible

ktpsns 7y ago
Oh yes. Especially, never ever loose vector information if available. Vectors can scale. Bitmaps cannot. The chart gets this plain wrong.
- CASHforGOLD 7y ago
  *lose
Anon1096 7y ago
mp4 with fallback to gif doesn't make much sense. More appropriate would be webm, or in the future AV1 with a fallback of h264 mp4 for video or high quality animated images. Using gif for small animations is fine, especially if you have transparency.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
  mp4 is for efficiency, gif is for compatibility. if an mp4 doesn't play, a webm probably won't play either. you can do mp4 -> webm -> gif if needed, but that's extra encoding that probably isn't needed.
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    Won't webm be more efficient than h264? (I'm assuming by mp4 you mean h264). So you'd want to do webm → mp4/h264 → gif. (I agree this isn't worth the time to set up in most cases)
    - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
      You're right, you would try WebM first. Like I said I'm not sure why you'd do both. Anything that plays VP8/9 should play h.264.
  - seba_dos1 7y ago
    WebM will play in cases where MP4/h264 won't play due to missing patent-encumbered codecs.
    - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
      That's not a big real world issue though, but yeah if you want to provide 100% compatibility it would help a little. It's hard to justify the extra (less efficient & slower) encoding to support those few edge cases. h.264 gives you good performance, hardware encoders/decoders, best compatibility. Most of the time just using it alone is the best value. All that depends on how many videos you need to transcode though. If you just have a few, do all the main codecs.
the8472 7y ago
gif supports transparency, mp4 doesn't.

ktpsns 7y ago

Oh yes. Especially, never ever loose vector information if available. Vectors can scale. Bitmaps cannot. The chart gets this plain wrong.

CASHforGOLD 7y ago
*lose

Anon1096 7y ago

mp4 with fallback to gif doesn't make much sense. More appropriate would be webm, or in the future AV1 with a fallback of h264 mp4 for video or high quality animated images. Using gif for small animations is fine, especially if you have transparency.

s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
mp4 is for efficiency, gif is for compatibility. if an mp4 doesn't play, a webm probably won't play either. you can do mp4 -> webm -> gif if needed, but that's extra encoding that probably isn't needed.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Won't webm be more efficient than h264? (I'm assuming by mp4 you mean h264). So you'd want to do webm → mp4/h264 → gif. (I agree this isn't worth the time to set up in most cases)
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    You're right, you would try WebM first. Like I said I'm not sure why you'd do both. Anything that plays VP8/9 should play h.264.
- seba_dos1 7y ago
  WebM will play in cases where MP4/h264 won't play due to missing patent-encumbered codecs.
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    That's not a big real world issue though, but yeah if you want to provide 100% compatibility it would help a little. It's hard to justify the extra (less efficient & slower) encoding to support those few edge cases. h.264 gives you good performance, hardware encoders/decoders, best compatibility. Most of the time just using it alone is the best value. All that depends on how many videos you need to transcode though. If you just have a few, do all the main codecs.

the8472 7y ago

gif supports transparency, mp4 doesn't.