3 ms·

I'm in an AirBnB in the countryside, it saturated the available bandwidth whilst showing me a bad quality dithered video at around 1FPS

wilg 7y ago
Sounds okay to me. Seems like a minor deal.
- catalogia 7y ago
  It's senseless.
  - wilg 7y ago
    It makes a lot of sense – they wanted to show an animation and most people can load it.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      It doesn't make sense, because 1) everybody who can load a gif can load an mp4 too. 2) an mp4 can actually be loaded by more people, because it isn't a senseless waste of bandwidth.
      - wilg 7y ago
        We have different definitions of "make sense". It makes sense why they would embed a GIF, because it is easier to do, more broadly compatible, and well-understood. It's not surprising someone would trade off bandwidth for this. I also think MP4 is better, it just makes sense to me why someone would use a GIF.
        catalogia 7y ago
        mp4's can be embedded just as easily as gifs, are compatible with everything under the sun except for obscure RMS-approved FOSS distributions, and are 'understood' as well as anything (whatever that means.) I can't think of a single rational reason to use a gif rather than an mp4 for something like this. The reason it's done is because some people are old dogs who can't learn new tricks. There is a good reason sites like reddit will transcode user-uploaded gifs to either mp4s or webms (the later of which isn't supported by Safari, but mp4 has no such problem.)
        wilg 7y ago
        I believe they cannot be embedded as easily as GIFs, especially in a publication's CMS or when posting on a social media site. If you are writing the raw video tag yourself and all the appropriate attributes, it is still not as easy as an image tag.
        catalogia 7y ago
        If your webmaster wants to use a 32MB gif because he can't be bothered to figure out how to embed an mp4, fire him on the spot. Serving up 32MB of gif to every user who visits the page because you can't figure out the <video> tag is inexcusable. This is very far from rocket science.
        wilg 7y ago
        Sigh.
        catalogia 7y ago
        Sigh all you want, just don't use gifs. It's an obsolete format with no remaining niche. Your first argument for the use of gifs focused on the experience of users seeing an animation "they wanted to show an animation and most people can load it." If the experience of the users is your concern (and it should be), you should feel obliged to never use a gif for something like this because the users will have an objectively superior experience with mp4's in every respect. If instead you're screwing the users just to save the webmaster some minor hassle, you should sack the webmaster.
        wilg 7y ago
        I'm sighing at how much you're overblowing the issue. I agree MP4 is better.

wilg 7y ago

Sounds okay to me. Seems like a minor deal.

catalogia 7y ago
It's senseless.
- wilg 7y ago
  It makes a lot of sense – they wanted to show an animation and most people can load it.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    It doesn't make sense, because 1) everybody who can load a gif can load an mp4 too. 2) an mp4 can actually be loaded by more people, because it isn't a senseless waste of bandwidth.
    - wilg 7y ago
      We have different definitions of "make sense". It makes sense why they would embed a GIF, because it is easier to do, more broadly compatible, and well-understood. It's not surprising someone would trade off bandwidth for this. I also think MP4 is better, it just makes sense to me why someone would use a GIF.
      - catalogia 7y ago
        mp4's can be embedded just as easily as gifs, are compatible with everything under the sun except for obscure RMS-approved FOSS distributions, and are 'understood' as well as anything (whatever that means.) I can't think of a single rational reason to use a gif rather than an mp4 for something like this. The reason it's done is because some people are old dogs who can't learn new tricks. There is a good reason sites like reddit will transcode user-uploaded gifs to either mp4s or webms (the later of which isn't supported by Safari, but mp4 has no such problem.)
        wilg 7y ago
        I believe they cannot be embedded as easily as GIFs, especially in a publication's CMS or when posting on a social media site. If you are writing the raw video tag yourself and all the appropriate attributes, it is still not as easy as an image tag.
        catalogia 7y ago
        If your webmaster wants to use a 32MB gif because he can't be bothered to figure out how to embed an mp4, fire him on the spot. Serving up 32MB of gif to every user who visits the page because you can't figure out the <video> tag is inexcusable. This is very far from rocket science.
        wilg 7y ago
        Sigh.
        catalogia 7y ago
        Sigh all you want, just don't use gifs. It's an obsolete format with no remaining niche. Your first argument for the use of gifs focused on the experience of users seeing an animation "they wanted to show an animation and most people can load it." If the experience of the users is your concern (and it should be), you should feel obliged to never use a gif for something like this because the users will have an objectively superior experience with mp4's in every respect. If instead you're screwing the users just to save the webmaster some minor hassle, you should sack the webmaster.
        wilg 7y ago
        I'm sighing at how much you're overblowing the issue. I agree MP4 is better.