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Gif is a weird one because it's silently been replaced while keeping the name around. Virtually every software using the term "gif" actually uses a h264/vp9 vid

Gif is a weird one because it's silently been replaced while keeping the name around. Virtually every software using the term "gif" actually uses a h264/vp9 video with no sound. Modern video formats are so much better that they are a no brainer to use while the word gif just got used to refer to looping video without sound rater than the literal gif image format.

karim79 1mo ago
Precisely. Kind of reminds me of "Hoover" or "Kleenex". Coca cola even. It has brand equity which means it's not going away any time soon.
vohk 1mo ago
Reminds me of when Imgur started trying to push changing gifs over to gifv, which were just mp4 with a strange new file extension. I didn't like their approach but it really was such an improvement on file size and quality.
bawolff 1mo ago
Not to mention if you for some odd reason wanted to do gif-style animations, you can also do it with apng or webp. You shouldn't, real video format makes more sense, but even if you did there is still no reason to use gif.
- mitxela 1mo ago
  Browsers only supported animated gif, not any other animated format
  - miladyincontrol 1mo ago
    What do you mean? Most browsers support animated jpeg xl, avif, webp and apng just fine.
    - madwolf 1mo ago
      Perhaps the clue is in the past tense "supported". Nowadays browsers support many formats, but in the "olden days" gif was the only way to get animations in browsers without plugins like Macromedia Flash...
      - deleted 1mo ago
        [deleted]
      - bawolff 1mo ago
        Support was added a decade ago (chrome 59 (2017), firefox 3 (2008)), so you have to go back quite a while.
  - out_of_protocol 1mo ago
    also, don't forget - actual video format is better for animated stuff. Current default approach is .webm which is standardized .mkv container + vp9 (or av1) video + opus audio (usually no audio to as a feature parity to gif). IMO animated picture formats like .avifs are very backwards and don't add much
    - jaffathecake 1mo ago
      One advantage to animated AVIF is that it supports an alpha channel, which AV1 doesn't. But I guess that just points to how short-sighted it was for AV1 to omit alpha channel support.
hulitu 1mo ago
> Gif is a weird one because it's silently been replaced while keeping the name around. Virtually every software using the term "gif" actually uses a h264/vp9 video with no sound. Then, long live the iMessage and Whatsup exploits, because SW developers are not able to do things right.
ButlerianJihad 1mo ago
I began a dispute on the English Wikipedia which revealed that more than a few people use “GIF” to describe, not a file format, but a visual style of looping animation.
account42 1mo ago
The major blunder here is browsers refusing to support silent videos in <img> tags etc. so we end up with all these hacks. Instead we got animated webp that you can't use for progressive enhancement because it doesn't have its own mime type and browsers reported support for image/webp before implementing animation support. And webp is also very limited when it comes to inter-frame compression for no good reason at all.
- tjoff 1mo ago
  Gif doesn't mean "no sound" anymore. Gif is more or less "short video", which broke a lot of assumptions at first but we have pretty much passed that transition and it makes sense for what they are used for today. That ship has sailed.
  - Gigachad 1mo ago
    Gif certainly does mean no sound. Look at discord, telegram or literally any app that says “gif” and it’s no sound video.
    - tjoff 1mo ago
      Those are messaging/communication apps,sound in those apps can be quite disruptive so that doesn't surprise me at all. It has nothing to do with the original gif, it is just that gif is now synonymous with short clip (with or without sound) and sound in that context is disruptive. Go to google.com, search for images and select image type gif and you will get mp4s with sound.
    - duskwuff 1mo ago
      Telegram's usage of "GIF" (any short video without sound) is incredibly weird and frequently goes against users' expectations. I wouldn't treat that as definitive.
  - zbentley 1mo ago
    I ... what? I've never heard anyone conflate the two--not teenagers, non-technical adults, or software people. Most folks know that "GIF" means "moving image that can be easily shared but has no sound and usually crap quality", not a video/audio clip.
kps 1mo ago
I am sure that none of the `.gif` files on my computer have been silently replaced. And there absolutely are cases where a lossless GIF is smaller than a lossy video format.

karim79 1mo ago

Precisely. Kind of reminds me of "Hoover" or "Kleenex". Coca cola even. It has brand equity which means it's not going away any time soon.

vohk 1mo ago

Reminds me of when Imgur started trying to push changing gifs over to gifv, which were just mp4 with a strange new file extension. I didn't like their approach but it really was such an improvement on file size and quality.

bawolff 1mo ago

Not to mention if you for some odd reason wanted to do gif-style animations, you can also do it with apng or webp. You shouldn't, real video format makes more sense, but even if you did there is still no reason to use gif.

mitxela 1mo ago
Browsers only supported animated gif, not any other animated format
- miladyincontrol 1mo ago
  What do you mean? Most browsers support animated jpeg xl, avif, webp and apng just fine.
  - madwolf 1mo ago
    Perhaps the clue is in the past tense "supported". Nowadays browsers support many formats, but in the "olden days" gif was the only way to get animations in browsers without plugins like Macromedia Flash...
    - deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
    - bawolff 1mo ago
      Support was added a decade ago (chrome 59 (2017), firefox 3 (2008)), so you have to go back quite a while.
- out_of_protocol 1mo ago
  also, don't forget - actual video format is better for animated stuff. Current default approach is .webm which is standardized .mkv container + vp9 (or av1) video + opus audio (usually no audio to as a feature parity to gif). IMO animated picture formats like .avifs are very backwards and don't add much
  - jaffathecake 1mo ago
    One advantage to animated AVIF is that it supports an alpha channel, which AV1 doesn't. But I guess that just points to how short-sighted it was for AV1 to omit alpha channel support.

hulitu 1mo ago

> Gif is a weird one because it's silently been replaced while keeping the name around. Virtually every software using the term "gif" actually uses a h264/vp9 video with no sound. Then, long live the iMessage and Whatsup exploits, because SW developers are not able to do things right.

ButlerianJihad 1mo ago

I began a dispute on the English Wikipedia which revealed that more than a few people use “GIF” to describe, not a file format, but a visual style of looping animation.

account42 1mo ago

The major blunder here is browsers refusing to support silent videos in <img> tags etc. so we end up with all these hacks. Instead we got animated webp that you can't use for progressive enhancement because it doesn't have its own mime type and browsers reported support for image/webp before implementing animation support. And webp is also very limited when it comes to inter-frame compression for no good reason at all.

tjoff 1mo ago
Gif doesn't mean "no sound" anymore. Gif is more or less "short video", which broke a lot of assumptions at first but we have pretty much passed that transition and it makes sense for what they are used for today. That ship has sailed.
- Gigachad 1mo ago
  Gif certainly does mean no sound. Look at discord, telegram or literally any app that says “gif” and it’s no sound video.
  - tjoff 1mo ago
    Those are messaging/communication apps,sound in those apps can be quite disruptive so that doesn't surprise me at all. It has nothing to do with the original gif, it is just that gif is now synonymous with short clip (with or without sound) and sound in that context is disruptive. Go to google.com, search for images and select image type gif and you will get mp4s with sound.
  - duskwuff 1mo ago
    Telegram's usage of "GIF" (any short video without sound) is incredibly weird and frequently goes against users' expectations. I wouldn't treat that as definitive.
- zbentley 1mo ago
  I ... what? I've never heard anyone conflate the two--not teenagers, non-technical adults, or software people. Most folks know that "GIF" means "moving image that can be easily shared but has no sound and usually crap quality", not a video/audio clip.

kps 1mo ago

I am sure that none of the `.gif` files on my computer have been silently replaced. And there absolutely are cases where a lossless GIF is smaller than a lossy video format.