memes

Great idea but there's a reason why people have a hard time getting the GIF train rolling

#1 being that GIF is turning into an ancient internet image standard that is sort of kinda maybe adopted and supported ... it was supposed to be retired because it was an old format but it is surviving because of some strange attachment we all have to this format ... and any site that offers to host a GIF is often technically not really hosting a GIF but instead a WEBM masked as a GIF ... because to host an actual GIF, like the one from the top post of the highqualitygifs community ... you have to load a 47MB GIF file from an image website (the same video file for the same or better quality could be contained in a WEBM or MP4 for about 4MB). (Don't get me started on the whole WEBM / MP4 open source debate) The problems start in first creating the GIF file and to make it as high quality as possible while minimizing its file size ... GIF is not very efficient are reducing file size ... and whatever blood sacrifice, chicken entrails black magic you can conjure in order to make a great looking video file as small as possible and save it as a GIF is a dying art ... and even once you get that magical GIF, you have to find a good hosting service to carry it and display it while also not severely altering it or rerendering it in whatever format is suitable to them because every platform has their own peculiar way of hosting a GIF ... and then you run into the issue of which hosting site renders or displays a GIF is compatible with the fediverse platform you want to display it on and whether or not it will get displayed on the website browser or on a phone app (and also which app) or both or neither.

I tried creating GIFs before and it is like pulling teeth from an epileptic shark ... and creating it is only the first step ... finding a way to have it uploaded and displayed properly on as many platforms and services as possible is akin to trying to pet a rabid hyena.

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