Why converts lemmy.world *.gif to *.mp4 ?
Isn’t *.gif more popular and easier to show direct/automatical in any browser and app?
File size.
*.mp4 doesn’t show as thumbnail,
*.gif readily shows as thumbnail for posts,
Tested a few times, in post’s URL field.
( *.gif has to be on external web site )
Maybe this is already in the list of improvements to be made ?
What, really? I may be showing my age here but I always assumed that gifs, comprising nothing but a series of pictures, are way less complex than any video format, which is made to accommodate audio and subtitles and whatnot. Has that changed sometime in the last 20 years?
Gif can be anywhere from 4 to 10 times the size. First hit on Google gif vs mp4 file size 😎👍
GIFs are an average of 5-10 times larger than an efficiently encoded MP4 video
So an automated process like Lemmy uses is efficient enough to do that? In my head, there exists a brain, somewhere, and I can’t even get digital copies of my dvds down to any manageable size without fiddling with Handbrake endlessly.
Gifs as an image file format has very poor compression, particularly for complex images. Each frame only contains the parts that are changed from the previous one, so simple graphics with only small parts that change work well. When the image starts getting larger and more detailed, proper video compression becomes much more efficient.
My Smartphones Standard-Video-Format is MP4. But I don’t want high Resolution and Tone. Does it make sense to convert it into *.gif and lemmy converts it back to *.mp4? I think not. Next I try to convert my high resolution *.mp4 direct into a low resolution *.mp4 without tone, if there is an easy way.
GIF is a huge waste of space, MP4 can do the same with less than a tenth of the space/bandwidth used.
Not having to wait 10 seconds for a short video to load is nice.