Is there any file format to replace animated gifs?

I heard animated gifs can be even larger than movies because each new gif frame loads an entirely new image whereas video codecs will only change pixels in a frame that are different from the previous frame’s pixels. It’s probably more complicated than that but some gifs can reduced to a 48:1 ratio using programs like gfycat:


FickleDisguisedHellbender

Original Gif: 10MB
gfycat 209KB

It seems like there should be a new or alternate image format to compensate for this right?

It was called flash. RIP.

Actually it was called APNG / MNG - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG

However, it never really caught on because people seemed to wanted to use the browser non cross platform compatible plugin called Flash instead of a format that could been built into every browser for any platofrm. LOL. Oh well.

The other reason it may not have caught on was that there were very few (good) programs to create the animations themselves by comparison to the other competing formats.

WPWiseOwl said

Actually it was called APNG / MNG - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APNG

Nope. APNG was (is) the same as gifs, but supporting 24-bit transparency. In fact, much heavier than gifs.

Is not what cmF talked about (format not repeting the entire canvas on each frame).

svg

Checkout latest tut on Codrops , very slick. Albeit a different slant on things.

I misread the OP’s post and thought he was merely asking if there was a newer but similar GIF replacement format. So, I stand corrected. :wink:

Google’s WebP should be a good choice - google it. As of now, only chrome browser supports it. Also, the format uses the same algorithm used by google’s v9 codec.