Testing out Imgur GIFV support

@medz I think it just means everyone is going to expect you to up your GIF creation game a bit.

@shawn I does seem like the 2nd one loads a tad faster... Won't do me any good unless I figure out how to capture and edit the video differently so it doesn't get compressed.

@medz Crappy GIFs produce crappy GIFVs. Garbage in, garbage out, after all.

The main benefit of GIFV is doing something like turning a brief clip of a video into a picture. To make it into a GIF, you'd have to reduce it to 256 colors and deal with the inefficient GIF compression algorithm, resulting in a big file.

@medz In your specific example, the GIF is either 26 or 28 times larger, depending on your browser.

@medz or WebM.

@SSteve Those things should turn into HTML5 videos with a play button on mobile devices.

@shawn oh snap! They're just black boxes on my Nexus 5 Chrome browser.

Firefox works though. (No play button)

@shawn How long should it take? I've left the iPad sitting on that page for about ten minutes and it's still the same. The animations all loaded on my MacBook fine so I don't think my shitty Internet connection is to blame for this one.

BTW, I don't envy you your job at all.

@shawn I confirm that it is not working at all on my iPad either.
On my iPhone, it does seem to work, but I have to tap a play button which then takes the gifv video fullscreen, as opposed to the actual animated gif that plays directly as embedded on the page.

@curtise same here. not working on iPad but working on iPhone using HTML5 play button. Looks like the Imgur GIFV page doesn't work either on iPad: http://imgur.com/blog/2014/10/09/introducing-gifv/

@shawn Yeah, Chrome on my Nexus 5 doesn't show the GIFVs on the imgur page either, so I guess it ain't yo' fault this time.

@medz I'm just getting black boxes on my Chrome mobile browser, too.

@shawn So, can we please maybe temper this thread with a warning that people can use gifv, but should avoid using gifv if possible, until such time that gifv works on a majority of mobile and tablet devices seamlessly?

@curtise I think you just did

@dude I largely agree with you, but ultimately it's a relatively smart solution to a relatively stupid problem - HTML5 video has not, for reasons beyond the scope of this thread, caught on to the point where it is dead simple for end-users. GIFs still are, so for someone who wants to just embed a stupid, no-nonsense, play-instantly-and-loop animation, we're stuck with those behemoths.

Imgur's GIFv system makes it pretty much just as stupidly easy to take advantage of modern codecs (H.264 or VP8). Uploading a GIF as normal to Imgur automatically creates the GIFv as well. This is presented as a '.gifv' file for the sake of familiarity and transparency to the user, though it's really not - it's an embed that serves up the aforementioned H.264 or VP8 video depending on the browser, or falls back to GIF in certain circumstances.

That leaves us with the double-edged sword of making it Just Work when you want to post a clip of a goat knocking over another goat, but also making it, as you said, 'imprecise and confusing.'

@jsh139 There should be a way to make that the default.

@walarney YES

@jsh139 Ludicrous Speed is fantastic for @Thumperchick's post above.

@harrison Exactly. And that's the gifv I was messing around with the speed on!

@brhfl Update: May have been a coincidence; computer pretty much totally fell apart right around there. Would not be surprised if this thread was a part of that, but I'm sure it was angry at something else too. Regardless, I maintain concerns over a big pile of autoloading, looping videos on old/crap-ass machines.

And of course it all works beautifully now that I'm home on the Xeon…

@Marble68 Take whatever meager expectations you have... and lower them. Then do it again. That way, when this box of unfortunate weirdness shows up, you'll be surprised and pleased!
Also - why did you post this in the gifv thread? o_0
HERE is the fuku thread.

@Marble68 @Thumperchick What Thumperchick said. And also be sure to open the received box, bag, pallet, or other container in a well ventilated area that is not used for food preparation.

@Thumperchick LOL - I have no idea why I posted this here. (facepalm)

@Marble68 and have a camera ready, you will want to capture a picture before the contents scurry off.

@xarous Sometimes, yes! Wait, what's your question?

@brhfl Clear?

@xarous Click Me

@thismyusername I know what webm is. My one-worded-poor-lack-of-a-question was merely a poke at gif/gifv vs webm that you can see on some image boards recently.

@xarous sorry my /s detector is off today hehe

@xarous Buuuuut GIFv is (sometimes) WebM. And, this has already been discussed here — there's no pretense that this is some new magic codec, it's all implementation, baby

@brhfl Nice post. I somehow missed that earlier. Thanks for the link.

@xarous No problem! I definitely think the system has its flaws (this thread has proven that mobile is… not there yet), but making that process easier for users is a good thing when you look at something like the @medz example — 36k WebM vs. 1011k GIF… handled transparently…

@Bingo So you are saying you can see this magnificent clip?

@KevinKevinKevin blank BLACK boxes. Not blank white .png files...

@Bingo same here.

@Saffer49 that tongue at the end tho :3

@JonT Oh man, this is a roller-coaster of emotion.