What is GIF?
The origins of GIF
Creation and popularity
A particular feature of the GIF is the number of colors supported: it allows a palette ranging from 2 to a maximum of 256 colors chosen from a 24-bit RGB palette (16 million shades). Each pixel is therefore represented on 8 bits at most.
Initially, GIF was widely used for simple graphic elements such as icons, buttons and advertising banners. However, once Internet users discovered that they could also create looping animations using this format, its popularity exploded. Thousands of humorous, creative and informative GIFs began to circulate on the Web, helping to shape online culture.
Why GIFs?
GIF’s success can be attributed to several key factors. Firstly, its universal compatibility with Web browsers, which means that users can display GIFs without the need for plug-ins or additional software. What’s more, its ease of creation, since it can be generated from image or video sequences with simple tools, has enabled anyone to become a creator of visual content online.
In the 2010s, the term GIF made a comeback on the Internet, independently of the real GIF format, to designate a short video, usually presented in a loop. It’s usually the MPEG-4 AVC video format that’s actually used, or more rarely the WebM & (Webp) format, both of which are much lighter in equivalent quality than the true GIF format.
Evolution towards MP4
MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital visual and also audio data, multimedia systems and file storage formats. It was introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related technologies approved by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).
Despite its success, GIF began to show its limitations over time, mainly due to its relatively large file size and limited image quality. That’s where MP4 comes in. With the advent of online video and improved Internet bandwidth, MP4 became a more attractive choice for content creators, offering better image quality and a smaller file size than GIF.
Advantages of MP4
MP4 has become the format of choice for many online uses, including video clips, movie trailers and viral videos on social networks. In addition to offering better visual quality, it also enables the integration of audio tracks, enriching the user experience and expanding the possibilities for interactive content creation.
In fact, MP4 is one of the most popular video conversion formats, offering optimum quality and extensive compatibility with various devices and platforms.
MP4 is a very popular video format, and is widely supported by most operating systems and devices. It offers outstanding image quality, efficient data compression and excellent metadata support. What’s more, it’s very lightweight and can be easily shared and stored on external storage devices. In short, the MP4 format offers several advantages over other video formats.
The advent of WebP
More recently, Google introduced the WebP & WebM image format, offering an even more efficient alternative to GIF and MP4. WebP uses more advanced compression based on modern algorithms, enabling files to be considerably reduced in size without compromising visual quality. What’s more, it supports transparency and animation, making it a versatile solution for Web developers looking for optimum performance.
Conclusion
In conclusion, GIF has played a crucial role in the history of the Internet as a versatile, easy-to-share image format. However, as technology has advanced and user needs have evolved, more efficient alternatives such as MP4 and WebP have emerged, offering better image quality, more efficient compression and greater versatility. Although GIF retains a special place in online culture, its importance is gradually declining in favor of more modern, higher-performance formats.
