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.
Don’t most browsers now support WebP? Much smaller and better quality animations than GIF.
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.
And then it doesn’t animate on your phone 😒
(Nor in the previews)
You are probably just using one of the few apps that still doesn’t support animated WebP images. What app is it not animated in for you?
FX (a replacement for the inbuilt document/folder/file manager on Xiaomi, and maybe more).
Amaze File Manager is similar. In this screenshot, the bottom of the folder has that yee-haw animation in a few different formats. The thumbnail for the GIF plays back fine, but the WebP/AVIF thumbnail is just a “broken image” icon.
And the app clearly supports static WebP images, because you can see one right above the first yee-haw, and its thumbnail appears just fine. I should probably just open a bug report or something. It’s likely a small issue for them to fix.
On the other hand, the GIF/WebP thumbnail are animated just fine in Material Files. But the AVIF thumbnail is just a still shot of the first frame.
But if I tap any of these files in any of these file manager apps and open the image in an image viewer app like Aves, it displays just fine there.
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)
If you tap the thumbnail, the image should open in full-screen and be animated. That is how it seems to work for me in Jerboa.
Yeah i’ve done that, but all i get is a fullscreen still-image 🤷