Stargate SG-1 S9E6 “Beachhead”
Meanwhile, I render an AVIF animation and say
(JPEG still image, in case that AVIF doesn’t display properly for you)
Stargate SG-1 S1E1 “Children of the Gods”
The main benefit of GIF, as a format, is simply the fact that it is supported basically everywhere. The main downside is that the file size is enormous while generally having a poor picture quality. Yes, it is possible to put a lot of time and effort into optimizing a particular animation to make for a GIF that has a passable picture quality at a decent file size. But for any amount of time that I might put into optimizing a GIF, if I were to put that same amount of time into optimizing it as an AVIF, it would be an even better quality and even smaller file size.
While I would love to move to using a modern image format such as AVIF, JPEG XL, or WebP for my animations, they simply are not supported in as many places as GIF. While the files tend to play back fine for me, if I try to upload a WebP or AVIF animation to my instance, it just uploads as a still photo. The instance even just rejects JPEG XL uploads outright. In most apps/programs, GIF thumbnails tend to display animated, but oftentimes, other animated file formats just display their thumbnails as still images. I also wouldn’t be surprised if the AVIF animation that is embedded up there doesn’t even display properly for you (which certainty isn’t helped by the fact that I used Catbox, which doesn’t work for many people with literally any file type, but that is an entirely different matter).
At the moment, WebP seems to be the best middle ground between widespread (albeit imperfect) support, high quality, and low file size. But at the end of the day, that standard is primarily backed by Google, so I really want JPEG XL support to grow. For the time being, I have found that when I post cruddy GIFs, my posts tend to do better than when I post animated WebPs, which I take to mean they reach more users that way. So I will prioritize GIF, for now.
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webm or just straight mp4, much lower file size and better quality, and also you can just have audio too, waow.
Certainly, but those are video formats. I want image files to share. Some websites are set up to take any video that does not have audio and play it in a looping video player that resembles an animated image, but that is not common. Most PieFed, Lemmy, etc. frontends will just show it in a standard embedded video player that doesn’t work like a GIF.
My standard process for creating animated images is to arrange a video in Kdenlive, render it out as MP4, then use FFMPEG to convert that MP4 to a GIF or whatever. As you say, the MP4 is always higher quality and a smaller file size than the animated image in any format, but it’s still a video.
Don’t most browsers now support WebP? Much smaller and better quality animations than GIF.
I assume that is a webp animation? Doesn’t appear to work on jerboa 😬 (or it just failed to load more than the first frame for some reason, idunno)
Browser support for WebP is 100% as far as I am aware, but individual websites also need to support it as well. As mentioned, many websites either do not support WebP uploads or do not actually display them properly. Most websites work fine, in my experience, but there are enough that don’t. There are also programs/applications other than web browsers that people want to use with animated images. For many people, their chat app of choice does not support WebP, so that format is useless to them.
TIL AVIF supports animation!
In watch parties on Mastodon, I often want to post an animation as a quick gag but an animated Webp posted from Mastodon will only display as a still (but Masto will animate an animated Webp posted from other compatible platforms like Wafrn 🤨). (I saved a whole bunch of your 30 Rock webps before realizing this 😅.)
As I don’t want to overload Fediverse instances with giant GIFs, I tend to put them thru ezgif.com first & convert to MP4. Even some that are already in MP4, I’ll squeeze down further at ezgif. (I don’t have the command-line-fu to just run them thru ffmpeg or some such. I need GUI.)
Actually, nowadays I look for GIFs on tenor.com first, then pick the MP4 option.
I wish I could just use lighter animated image formats like Webp & AVIF, but given how many sites / programs still refuse to handle JPEGs if the file extension is .jpeg instead of .jpg 🤦, I won’t hold my breath expecting them to support these other formats.
PS I just tested uploading your Carter animated AVIF on my main Mastodon account & my alt (Mastodon Glitch).
Mastodon 4.7.2
- Accepts attachment
- Displays with “GIF” marker… but unanimated :(
- Clicking on it doesn’t help, remains unanimated
- https://ohai.social/@klu9/117366462665549174
Mastodon Glitch v4.5.18-EXQ1.01+glitch
- I can choose & upload it but when upload completes:
422 Validation failed: File has contents that are not what they are reported to be
In watch parties on Mastodon, I often want to post an animation as a quick gag but an animated Webp posted from Mastodon will only display as a still (but Masto will animate an animated Webp posted from other compatible platforms like Wafrn 🤨).
PieFed seems to work similarly. If I upload an animated WebP to my instance, the end result will just be a still image of the first frame. My solution is similar to yours: I just upload to an old Lemmy account (because WebP uploads work just fine on that platform), copy the image URL, and post it here. Just another of the handful of websites that still do not fully support WebP.
Just to be clear, I don’t have a Wafrn account; I saw an animated WebP on Mastodon from someone else & when I asked them how they made it work, they told me they use Wafrn.
But that reminds me: I have a basically unused Sharkey account. Let me see what happens there:
- Original Mastodon post viewed on Sharkey: the AVIF is displayed with video controls, but it remains unanimated even when pressing the Play button :(
- Posting the animated AVIF from Sharkey, viewed on Sharkey: success! No video controls, just an animated image https://federation.network/notes/artlgrdmabzh01ab
- That animated AVIF posted from Sharkey but viewed on Mastodon: failure! unanimated.
Sharkey’s no good for watch parties anyways, doesn’t really follow a hashtag live. Also I think Sharkey development has been abandoned, don’t know if that instance will migrate to MIsskey or what.
