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.