[HN Gopher] How to GIF (2025 Edition)
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How to GIF (2025 Edition)
Author : speckx
Score : 27 points
Date : 2025-02-06 01:23 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (fullystacked.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (fullystacked.net)
| asimpletune wrote:
| Basically use webp if you want to have the fewest problems while
| still retaining the majority of benefits out there. Good
| compression, works across most devices, and unexpected pitfalls
| like animating transparency aren't an issue.
| vbernat wrote:
| The article is surprisingly inconclusive. From my
| understanding, the easiest way is to use the <video> tag with
| mp4.
| asimpletune wrote:
| <video> and mp4 can also work well. As a GIF replacement, the
| initial differences are minor because you can easily add loop
| and autoplay to the video's attributes, and both work with
| most browsers' reader modes. From my tests, though, video-as-
| GIFs isn't a feature supported by the major RSS readers,
| while WebP works without any issues.
|
| Anyways, the real insurmountable problem is animations with
| transparent backgrounds. There's no good way to do this in
| mp4, and WebP seems to be the only format that does it well.
| But because of all the little pains, headaches, and surprises
| that can arise due to subtly different use cases, I still
| think WebP is the format that will give you the most benefit
| with the least drawbacks for silent animated images. Even
| without having transparent backgrounds as a requirement.
| vunderba wrote:
| Agreed with the MP4 recommendation. As I mentioned in another
| thread, animated WebP can have frame-rate issues on Safari...
| but if you want autoplaying videos _with_ transparency it 's
| pretty much the only game in town.
|
| If you don't need transparency, I would 100% stick with mp4.
| Just make sure you set the tag elements "autoplay loop
| muted".
|
| Mobile Safari used to be pretty weird. If you wanted autoplay
| (and _NO_ controls), you needed to make sure to remove the
| audio channel on the video. Setting the "muted" attribute
| wasn't enough.
| Lammy wrote:
| Pardon my pedantry but MP4 is just the container and does not
| spare you from finding a compatible set of codecs to put in
| that container that will play on your target browser-plus-OS
| combo. See the video and audio codec table here for example:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/Media/Guides/Fo...
| ghxst wrote:
| Are the features and codecs safari doesn't support part of
| WebKit? If so does that mean that any browser on iOS doesn't
| support it either?
|
| Also, the article links to a blog post[0] about video with
| transparency, and although the performance is the main complaint
| I had no idea this was a thing! Worth the read if you enjoyed the
| article I think.
|
| [0] https://jakearchibald.com/2024/video-with-transparency/
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Every browser on iOS is WebKit unless you're from EU.
| ghxst wrote:
| Yeah that's my point, but I'm not sure if codec support is
| implemented outside of that.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Nope, it's implemented in the browser engine. I honestly
| find it funny that, for example, Opera, Edge and Chrome are
| supposedly different browsers, even though it's all
| actually Chromium and there is no meaningful difference.
| seqizz wrote:
| I re-encoded all of my webm's to mp4's back then on my "gif
| blog", thanks to Safari and all my mac-using friends saying "I
| can't see it". Now look who started to support it eh.
| autoexec wrote:
| Replacing gifs with video files does come with an increased the
| risk of malware being spread. If it gets common to stuff webpages
| full of video files we should expect to see an increase in the
| use of malicious video files to do bad things.
|
| In my case, as someone who doesn't allow javascript by default
| and prevents media from playing automatically the only image on
| that entire page that loaded for me was dancingbaby.webp
|
| Everything else (if it showed up at all) displayed as generic
| blocked elements I'd have to click on to view (or right click to
| download) so if that catches on websites that are currently busy
| with gifs should load a lot faster and look a lot cleaner. That's
| a plus.
| areyourllySorry wrote:
| i don't understand how one thing leads to another. if anything,
| a popular feature (videos) is more protected against 0days as
| there's more eyes on it, not the opposite. what else could a
| "malicious video file" be, a cognitohazard? i am aware of the
| facebook tails video 0day but that's not a browser issue, nor
| is it a common issue
| autoexec wrote:
| > if anything, a popular feature (videos) is more protected
| against 0days as there's more eyes on it, not the opposite.
|
| It's usually the opposite. The more common something is, the
| more likely attackers are to target that thing. Adobe acrobat
| was a prime target for malicious PDF files because it was
| what everyone used. Once browsers started displaying PDF
| files attackers turned their attention there.
|
| Ultimately every exploit that gets discovered does result in
| increased security, as bad code gets patched, but there's no
| shortage of bad code and even long lived codebases get new
| flaws discovered all the time.
|
| > what else could a "malicious video file" be, a
| cognitohazard?
|
| malicious video files usually target whatever software
| processes them.
|
| Here are some other examples:
|
| https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-6351
|
| https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-13156
|
| https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-29341
|
| https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-6879
|
| https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-57510
|
| https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-2566
|
| https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-11184
| binaryturtle wrote:
| Time to block webp by default too. It's still a way too
| immature format to be relied upon. In fact it already was
| exploitable (via libwebp), AFAIR. :^)
| Lammy wrote:
| Weird to see this downvoted since this has actually happened:
| https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/cve-2023-4863
|
| WebP might support GIF-like animation, but since it's just one
| feature of an incredibly-complicated codec it invites a huge
| attack surface with extremely wide range since 99% of people
| will use libwebp. GIF89a on the other hand is simple enough
| that lots of people can write a working decoder.
| autoexec wrote:
| It's happened multiple times over a large number of formats.
| Even gifs have been exploited
| (https://www.zdnet.com/article/whatsapp-vulnerability-
| exploit...), but just as you said it's the complexity of
| video that makes it more difficult to keep secure.
| lxe wrote:
| Unless I can right click (or long press) and copy or save and
| then paste somewhere else, I don't want it.
| vunderba wrote:
| The site claims that animated WebP might be fully supported - but
| while writing a Obsidian-to-Static site exporter that would
| compress animated GIF file to animated WebP, I found that Webkit-
| based browsers seem to struggle with fluid playback particularly
| on iOS.
|
| Example here:
|
| https://gondolaprime.pw/animation-test
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(page generated 2025-02-08 23:00 UTC)