Playing GIFs

[IcemanBo]

@Ralle

It's about a Spells Section problem, but maybe somewhere else, too.
GIFS are very great method to show the spell in action, though they are huge, like several megabytes per GIF, and sometimes there are multiple ones, too.
It ends up, I need to load the pages for several minutes each time, before I can do anything, which kind of sucks if I need to open multiple spell submissions.

Could it be possible to implement a click system that then activates the GIFs? It would be a great thing! : )

 

[KILLCIDE]

YES. YES. YES. YES.

 

[Ralle]

I recently contributed to this project. It will implement lazy loading of images on the site. This means that images in tabs or hidden tags or images out of view will only load when you actually scroll by them. This is part of the way, but I agree, a play button for GIFs would indeed also help.

EDIT: Oh and I started here.

 

[IcemanBo]

Oh, nice. Your solution sounds great actually. : )

 

[Dr Super Good]

People should stop using GIFs as they were mostly obsoleted decades ago by much more efficient lossy video formats. The only reason this GIF usage trend has taken off in the last few years is due to a small minority of people in the world having access to fast internet connections and people not understanding/caring about the implications of using GIF.

People should much rather be using MPEG based codecs for video. What turns out to be a 5 MB+ gif could be a <1MB encoded video which can be downloaded on demand. All HTML5 browsers have built in support for a variety of video codecs so hardware accelerated playback is even possible. YouTube tags do this to some extent, but they have the problem of their destination having to be resolved before the rest of the page can load so stacking 10+ in a single page of a thread can cause the page to be unresponsive for several minutes.

 

[KILLCIDE]

How does one make an MPEG?

 

[Dr Super Good]

How does one make an MPEG?

The same way YouTube, Switch, BBC IPlayer etc do. You get a source video, push it through a codec to get your resulting video file in one of many video formats. Kind of like making a GIF except what you get out is usually smaller for similar visual quality.

Most screen capture programs such as Xbox DVR use some kind of MPEG style encoding already to facilitate efficient storage as well as the possibility of live streaming.

 

[KILLCIDE]

Most screen capture programs such as Xbox DVR

Any other recommendations?

 

[Dr Super Good]

Any other recommendations?

Here is a list of free open source ones.

 

[Chaosy]

Gifs are easy to make, I cannot say the same for videos. Most video recording software got drawsbacks, shitty quality, watermarks, limited recording time etc
and even then the file size is usually relatively big.

Fraps makes like 1 gig per 10 seconds in HD though I know fraps is horrific in that department

 

[Dr Super Good]

Gifs are easy to make, I cannot say the same for videos. Most video recording software got drawsbacks, shitty quality, watermarks, limited recording time etc
and even then the file size is usually relatively big.

Videos are as easy to make as GIF. Sure the computer has to work harder but ultimately it is the same principle.

Fraps makes like 1 gig per 10 seconds in HD though I know fraps is horrific in that department

Sounds like the result of no compression or too high bitrate.

 

[Chaosy]

Let me correct myself then. Video recording software is not as accessible if you wanna do it quick and easy for free. I personally had to spend a few hours to find one without drawbacks.

When you actually have the software it is as easy

 

[Dr Super Good]

Video recording software is not as accessible if you wanna do it quick and easy for free.

Yes but you need such software anyway to make gifs...

 

[Chaosy]

Yes, but it is way easier to find good ones for free compared to the video software.

 

[Rui]

watermarks

God, do I hate them!

I personally had to spend a few hours to find one without drawbacks.

Same here.

#MyKindOfMagic

 

[Dr Super Good]

So because you are too lazy to spend a few hours setting up to create sensible video files, you instead inflict bloated video files on everyone that most people in the world cannot view reasonably?

Xbox DVR is integrated into Windows 10 and can handle live streaming. If you use either NVidia or AMD graphic cards they also provide a live capture solution that can be directly live stream. There are multiple open source solutions which handle video capture of varying efficiency levels, some of which are used by professional streamers and YouTube people.

 

[Ralle]

You can use OBS to do a screen recording and Handbrake to compress.