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I've used this for years and it's the best out there. Definitely use it for converting videos for Google Slides and such. But it's such a travesty that we're i

I've used this for years and it's the best out there. Definitely use it for converting videos for Google Slides and such. But it's such a travesty that we're in 2024 and still using GIFs in place of videos. I guess it's not necessary on the web directly anymore, but so many other platforms, like Google, support GIFs but not videos. So we're all stuck encoding into an insanely space/cpu inefficient format just to get something animating.

niutech 2y ago
Instead of GIF, use APNG or animated WebP, supported in almost all web browsers.
cl3misch 2y ago
Creating GIFs for Google Slides is also exactly my main usecase for gifski. Today I played around with different formats for animated images (GIFs, apng, svg) and videos (webm, mp4, ...) in Google Slides. Only GIFs can be directly embedded. Other animated images are not supported, and videos have to be files in Google Drive. Ironically, GIFs are way larger than e.g. a webm video but are the only format which can be directly embedded in a presentation.
ea016 2y ago
I think Google Slides supports video, the downside is that you need to upload them to Google Drive first
- jonplackett 2y ago
  It does - or YouTube. But they will not auto play like a gif and take over the screen when playing. feature requests for Google: - inline video that auto plays and loops. This is like 1 line of html. Please do this! - let me drag a video into the slide and just upload it for me and embed it - or just convert videos to gifs for me when I drag in!!
Deukhoofd 2y ago
Many platforms already stopped using gifs, for precisely those reasons. Tumblr silently converts to animated webp when uploading a gif, imgur converts it to mp4, etc.
- mid-kid 2y ago
  This is really annoying when trying to share gifs across platforms. I can't export a "gif" (.mp4) from telegram and upload it to Discord and display it like a gif instead of a click-to-play video, even though discord uses .mp4 under the hood as well...
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Maybe all it takes for this is a new canonical file extension, i.e. something like .m4g? The contract for these could be something like "no sound, default playback in a loop, 30 seconds or less; don't render if any of these requirements aren't met" to make sure people don't abuse it for auto-playing videos.
    - masklinn 2y ago
      It's really more of a browser issue, a GIF you can just right click and download, but they don't make that option available for videos.
      - lxgr 2y ago
        That option does actually exist for "plain" HTML5 <video> tags, as far as I know. It's just that most videos aren't hosted as simple as that, and are effectively stitched together out of multiple MPEG-DASH, HLS etc. fragments – or the site uses a custom video player. In both cases, the result is a lack of a right-click-to-save option.
      - sureIy 2y ago
        <img src="v.mp4"> is a thing, but unfortunately it’s not supported outside Safari. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60114243/using-videos-in-img-html https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60114243/using-videos-in...
Etherlord87 2y ago
One example is Stack Exchange (Stack Overflow) - supports GIFs up to 2 MB, but not videos.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  GIFs up to 20MB on Reddit on most subs, but videos only on certain subs.
dheera 2y ago
I really wish they could just make HTML support <img src="foo.mp4"> and have it behave exactly like all other images in how CSS handles it (with auto loop, no controls). This would solve all the reasons people use GIFs in place of videos. Like for example <img src="foo.mp4" style="width:100%"> should make the image occupy 100% of the width of the parent element and auto-scale the height according to the mp4's aspect ratio. You can't do this with the <video> element without an extremely unintuitive wrapper div.
- sureIy 2y ago
  It should work in Safari https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60114243/using-videos-in-img-html https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60114243/using-videos-in...
porphyra 2y ago
I wish there was some kind of small, soundless video supporting transparency for emojis, stickers, small animations, diagrams in slide shows, etc, that is guaranteed to autoplay and loop without issues. The problem with <video> of course is that there's no way to tell if it's going to play an annoying sound, take a long time to load, change the screen brightness due to HDR features, require a weird proprietary codec, need the browser to render video controls, and so on. So they end up getting blocked from autoplay by default. I suppose APNG or WebP are ideal for this but it is poorly supported, in that very few tools let you export to APNG or WebP --- browsers actually have decent support for this [1] and Discord uses APNG for stickers. [1] https://caniuse.com/apng https://caniuse.com/apng
- niutech 2y ago
  You can convert images/video to APNG at https://ezgif.com/apng-maker https://ezgif.com/apng-maker or to animated WebP at https://ezgif.com/webp-maker https://ezgif.com/webp-maker.

niutech 2y ago

Instead of GIF, use APNG or animated WebP, supported in almost all web browsers.

cl3misch 2y ago

Creating GIFs for Google Slides is also exactly my main usecase for gifski. Today I played around with different formats for animated images (GIFs, apng, svg) and videos (webm, mp4, ...) in Google Slides. Only GIFs can be directly embedded. Other animated images are not supported, and videos have to be files in Google Drive. Ironically, GIFs are way larger than e.g. a webm video but are the only format which can be directly embedded in a presentation.

ea016 2y ago

I think Google Slides supports video, the downside is that you need to upload them to Google Drive first

jonplackett 2y ago
It does - or YouTube. But they will not auto play like a gif and take over the screen when playing. feature requests for Google: - inline video that auto plays and loops. This is like 1 line of html. Please do this! - let me drag a video into the slide and just upload it for me and embed it - or just convert videos to gifs for me when I drag in!!

Deukhoofd 2y ago

Many platforms already stopped using gifs, for precisely those reasons. Tumblr silently converts to animated webp when uploading a gif, imgur converts it to mp4, etc.

mid-kid 2y ago
This is really annoying when trying to share gifs across platforms. I can't export a "gif" (.mp4) from telegram and upload it to Discord and display it like a gif instead of a click-to-play video, even though discord uses .mp4 under the hood as well...
- lxgr 2y ago
  Maybe all it takes for this is a new canonical file extension, i.e. something like .m4g? The contract for these could be something like "no sound, default playback in a loop, 30 seconds or less; don't render if any of these requirements aren't met" to make sure people don't abuse it for auto-playing videos.
  - masklinn 2y ago
    It's really more of a browser issue, a GIF you can just right click and download, but they don't make that option available for videos.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      That option does actually exist for "plain" HTML5 <video> tags, as far as I know. It's just that most videos aren't hosted as simple as that, and are effectively stitched together out of multiple MPEG-DASH, HLS etc. fragments – or the site uses a custom video player. In both cases, the result is a lack of a right-click-to-save option.
    - sureIy 2y ago
      <img src="v.mp4"> is a thing, but unfortunately it’s not supported outside Safari. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60114243/using-videos-in-img-html https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60114243/using-videos-in...

Etherlord87 2y ago

One example is Stack Exchange (Stack Overflow) - supports GIFs up to 2 MB, but not videos.

qingcharles 2y ago
GIFs up to 20MB on Reddit on most subs, but videos only on certain subs.

dheera 2y ago

I really wish they could just make HTML support <img src="foo.mp4"> and have it behave exactly like all other images in how CSS handles it (with auto loop, no controls). This would solve all the reasons people use GIFs in place of videos. Like for example <img src="foo.mp4" style="width:100%"> should make the image occupy 100% of the width of the parent element and auto-scale the height according to the mp4's aspect ratio. You can't do this with the <video> element without an extremely unintuitive wrapper div.

sureIy 2y ago
It should work in Safari https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60114243/using-videos-in-img-html https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60114243/using-videos-in...

porphyra 2y ago

I wish there was some kind of small, soundless video supporting transparency for emojis, stickers, small animations, diagrams in slide shows, etc, that is guaranteed to autoplay and loop without issues. The problem with <video> of course is that there's no way to tell if it's going to play an annoying sound, take a long time to load, change the screen brightness due to HDR features, require a weird proprietary codec, need the browser to render video controls, and so on. So they end up getting blocked from autoplay by default. I suppose APNG or WebP are ideal for this but it is poorly supported, in that very few tools let you export to APNG or WebP --- browsers actually have decent support for this [1] and Discord uses APNG for stickers. [1] https://caniuse.com/apng https://caniuse.com/apng

niutech 2y ago
You can convert images/video to APNG at https://ezgif.com/apng-maker https://ezgif.com/apng-maker or to animated WebP at https://ezgif.com/webp-maker https://ezgif.com/webp-maker.