H.264 level 4.0 seems to have similar behaviors and works on a very wide variety of platforms in my experience.
Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Android, and iOS. That covers most of what we want, right? It fails on say... a 2009 era netbook or Android Gingerbread, but we gotta draw the line somewhere.
Even if you do care about Android Gingerbread: H264 3.0 Baseline profile IIRC worked on that (though its been a decade, so maybe I'm getting version numbers mixed up...). Going back to H.264 3.0 Baseline would reduce your compression-efficiency (more distortion / noise at same filesize, or larger filesize for same levels of distortion), but greatly improve your compatibility with decade-old devices if you cared.
Even H.264 3.0 Baseline is a far superior format compared to GIF though.
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Lol audio is a mess though. But video-only is actually way better than most people expect.
Most of gfycat's traffic these days is .mp4 files that pretend to be gifs. Even if you upload a gif, its converted into .mp4 because its a far more efficient transmission codec.
I'm sure there's some javascript / backend logic that handles some corner cases. But... yeah. A lot of self-looping .mp4 stuff seems to be solved. The <video> tag has been getting more and more consistent these days.
I just do some hobby stuff though. I only test on the stuff close to me (chrome, edge, firefox, my phone). So I can't say too much about reliability on older / more obscure platforms.
Twitter does the same, and I (along with other people) hate it. I mean... nice that it saves data, but I can't save it. To download an image is SO simple, but have to rely on 3rd party services to convert the video back to gif if I want to post it as gif on twitter later, or send as gif on whatsapp.
I know enough about the debugging terminals in Chrome and Firefox to just "save-as" the .mp4 file itself. So I personally haven't had any problems with saving or sharing .mp4s. (Most commonly: grabbing some animated .mp4 meme and copy/pasting it into Discord)
But yes: its weird that Chrome / Firefox don't have easy-to-use "save as" buttons on .mp4s. But just grab the .mp4 and share the .mp4 on whatever services you use.
Increasingly, it seems like .mp4 is becoming the new gif. Its not quite as user friendly yet, but there's all sorts of advantages compared to .gif.
> I know enough about the debugging terminals in Chrome and Firefox to just "save-as" the .mp4 file itself.
Right, so this just don't work for like 90% of the population, or when you are on mobile, right?
Edit: what I mentioned about saving the mp4 and having problem later is: if I save the video and then try to re-share it on Twitter, it will be shared as a video, and not as a gif - or at least that was the case last time I tried
Can I just upload a H.264 level 4.0 video anywhere where an image is allowed and it will be displayed as an image? Will it be displayed as an image in any forum, chat/messenger platform? Can I use it as my avatar in places that allows for gif avatars, like Mastodon?
Hmm, I'm thinking about the Web-browser level (Chrome / Edge / Firefox) instead of say, web-application layer (ie: PHPbb vs XenForo).
The web browsers seems to have significantly improved compatibility of <video> in recent years, and even had decent compatibility 10 years ago (if you use Baseline profile H.264 3.0 videos and Javascript to smooth over some edges).
I've seen this debate happening for so many years, and people will not stop using gifs until other solution works exactly as a gif for the end user. APNG or WEBP would be a better solution, as they are images in the end.
You say they had decent compatibility 10 years ago, but no. At least a couple years ago you still needed many fallbacks and it was a hassle to guarantee the video would show properly. Not to say that you wouldn't be able to share it as image to tumblr/pinterest for example.
Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Android, and iOS. That covers most of what we want, right? It fails on say... a 2009 era netbook or Android Gingerbread, but we gotta draw the line somewhere.
Even if you do care about Android Gingerbread: H264 3.0 Baseline profile IIRC worked on that (though its been a decade, so maybe I'm getting version numbers mixed up...). Going back to H.264 3.0 Baseline would reduce your compression-efficiency (more distortion / noise at same filesize, or larger filesize for same levels of distortion), but greatly improve your compatibility with decade-old devices if you cared.
Even H.264 3.0 Baseline is a far superior format compared to GIF though.
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Lol audio is a mess though. But video-only is actually way better than most people expect.