hey people of the fediverse who are clever at tech and like run linux and firefox and do rails of ruby and shit
why is everything videos these days?
like instead of gifs. why do imgur and facebook and places like that some of the time convert a gif into a video? doesn't that mean it takes up more space? why take the time to do the conversion anyway?
are gifs a security concern somehow now? why do only some gifs get converted to mp4??? is this just a mystery or what
@wigglytuffitout Videos actually take less space, potentially WAY less, because video compression today is a lot better than in 1987. GIFs are horrifically inefficient by modern standards, which is why they're usually so low quality: high quality GIFs get really huge really fast.
@wigglytuffitout gifs are very old and compared to a mp4 they usually use more storage. mp4s can be decoded by hardware while gifs have to play entirely in software. Also mp4s make it easier to have features like play-on-hover
@wigglytuffitout Facebook, in particular, also is more willing to show videos than images: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-viral-pages-on-Facebook-posting-one-image-videos-instead-of-pictures
@wigglytuffitout I can't think of any technical reason to do it so it's probably just "metrics! click through rate! engagement!"-related crap