AnimGIFs need a better codec

[TheZenPsycho]

as I've commented before, SVG fits pretty much all those criteria:

- works inside an <img> tag

- works in background: url()

- supports both smil animation and css animation

- supported back to IE10 (with css animations)

- plays automatically in a loop with no play controls

- can embed jpegs, pngs, videos as videostrips or diff images

- can apply alpha transparency via a mask operation

- flexible enough to apply a wide variety of compression techniques including multiple update regions (where gif only supports one rect per frame)

- Controllable via javascript (as long as you trade off putting it in an img tag and use an object tag instead)

previous comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8038838

all that's missing is widely available software to author SVG animations.

[pornel]

A major use-case is to efficiently play a clip from a video camera, so purely vector animation or a sequence of frames from still images isn't good enough.

I've tested an SVG with an <svg:video> element (http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGTiny12/multimedia.html#restrictedVid...), but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be supported anywhere.

I've also tested an SVG playing video via HTML in a <foreignObject>. In Firefox it does play when the SVG is opened as a standalone file, but not when embedded in <img src>. So close :(

[TylerE]

This, imo, represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the typical use case.

If posting the image on a typical forum requires more than some sort of [img]http://foohost.com/23452t23t.baz[/img] it's a non-starter.

[NVI]

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Supported_...

There isn’t a single video format that is supported by all major browsers.

[simoncion]

Moot decided on webm for 4chan's anigif replacement. If more websites do the same, MSFT and Apple will have their decision made for them.

We need to stop caring about the opinions of companies who aren't interested in helping The Web.

[germanforblack]

You could also use <video src="/path/to/vid.mp4" muted loop autoplay>

[pornel]

That's what sites do currently, but it's still not quite there yet, because it requires special markup and doesn't loop when you share the URL directly (I hope the latter can be fixed easily: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1041238 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=395413).

Annoyingly GIF isn't supported as a source in <video> either, which adds extra complexity when you want to provide a proper fallback.

[ZeroGravitas]

This is one side if it, 4chan's webm is another, various 3rd party hosts, shims and polyfills are in between.

I'd like to see Mozilla and Google capitalize on this to help spread royalty free codecs

How does webm decoded in JavaScript compare with a gif for video? Is there a subset (beyond removing all audio) that could speed thinks up?

[derf_]

> How does webm decoded in JavaScript compare with a gif for video? Is there a subset (beyond removing all audio) that could speed thinks up?

https://wiki.xiph.org/Ogv.js

[est]

What's real need to be fixed is how to provide an easy copy-pastable way of viral spreading like GIF.

GIF is popular simply because people can copy it around by 2 clicks. Copying video files is PITA because bullshits like region restrictions, CDN providers, dynamic URLs, etc.

[scott_karana]

That just the thing, though; video file formats do not intrinsically have any of those limitations, which is exactly why he wrote this article: it's a false dichotomy.

Files are just files, and video ones are typically smaller.

Imagine, if you will, a GouTube where animated GIFs were rigorously checked against existing copyrighted material, removed by DMCA requests, hosted around the world. How would it be mechanically different than Youtube, except for changes surrounding the Flash player?

Thusly, imagine Tumblr hosting WebM/H264 files instead of (or in addition to) GIFs. Mechanically identical.

[TD-Linux]

You can right click any html5 video and choose Save video as...

[Titanbase]

I don't have a problem with AnimGIFs. They work fine for their intended purpose.

Interesting side note: I worked at Jasc Software 20 years ago in technical support, helping people with Paint Shop Pro 7 and Animation Shop.

Animation Shop still works great for creating AnimGIFs and PSP7 still works great for a complete 'vector+bitmap' graphics app. It's impressive that some software is so resilient.

[pornel]

If by intended purpose you mean animations like smileys, then yeah, it's OK.

But if you look at imgur.com or Tumblr you'll find GIF is used mostly for video clips and this results in multi-megabyte files with dreadful quality, e.g. http://ministryofgifs.org/

gfycat typically reports 15:1 compression improvement when converting to WebM.

[ajanuary]

The amount of RAM that's required to browse tumblr because of the gifs is slightly insane.

[clarry]

Twitter is listening: http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/sorry-this-gif-is-not-av...

[ahoge]

Some of this is covered by the WebP FAQ:

https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/faq

[jccalhoun]

"AnimGIFs?" Is this a term people really use?

[SimeVidas]

I was confused about that term for a few moments. We should have a standard shorthand for animated GIF. How about aGIF or AGIF?

[SquareWheel]

I would be perfectly okay with browsers dropping support for the animated gif. We've had better options for years.