Self burn gif8/12/2023 ![]() Since the popularity of GIFs rises every day and this dynamic content form performs really well across different platforms, Storyly integrated Giphy into the creator studio. So, it handles the problem of sharing a GIF from one medium to another. If a GIF is on Giphy, you can use this GIF on your social networks that allow it. Having been recently acquired by Facebook in May 2020, Giphy is an online database and search engine that allows us to search or share GIFs and GIF-like formats. It just makes videos work like GIFs and requires an internet connection to work. On appearance, it doesn’t look different than the GIF. In 2014, Gfycat started to convert GIFs to video files. But after HTML 5 improved video, video format has risen as a rival to the GIF. In the old days, playing a video on the web was complicated, the process required plugins. ![]() How come we continue to use GIFs even though there are better alternatives in terms of quality and saving space. mp4 format, it takes up less than 3 MB because transformation between frames requires smaller instruction. As a GIF, this video takes up more than 60 MB since every frame is stored as a complete image. Popular Mechanics explain the difference with the above video. ![]() GIFs contain every frame of animation we see, however, this is not the case for videos. Some of the GIFs we see on the internet nowadays, they are just video files acting like animated GIFs, playing on mute, looping forever and don’t display control bars. Popular Mechanics gives us a secret about our modern-day animated GIFs: behind that animation, there is no “.gif“ extension. Of course, it is very rare now to see still GIF images since there are better formats such as JPEG and PNG, yet animated GIFs have no rivals. In 1999, the GIF format was almost murdered, but it survived and reached modern internet times. In 2004, Unysis patent on LZW compression expired worldwide. In the following years, Unysis enforced licensing fees on only big organizations that directly purchased the rights to use GIFs for financial benefits. The League for Programming Freedom, trying to announce to the world that the GIF is evil and also to push PNG, came up with Burn All GIFs Day to take place on November 5, 1999. In 1999 Unysis renewed its efforts on LZW patents which would expire in 20 (first for the US and the latter for outside the US). The PNG increased its popularity but couldn’t erase the GIF, even after Burn All GIFs Day. However, PNGs couldn’t animate, because the creators of the PNG didn’t want animation. PNG supported thousands of colors (GIF format supports only 256 colors), offered better transparency and it was completely open-source and patent-free. The name eventually became PNG, yet the pronunciation remains as of PING. The firstly proposed name was PING, Ping is not GIF. In 1996, the mentioned group of engineers released the first version of Portable Network Graphics (PNG). We expect that the CompuServe-Unisys action will spell the death of GIF as a commercially viable technology, shifting the attention of the online communications community to JPEG imaging.”Īfter the announcement, the engineers including those who took part in the creation of JPEG started to debate GIF alternatives on the Usenet newsgroup “aphics” under the name of “ Thoughts on a GIF-replacement file format”. The announcement of the CompuServe-Unisys GIF Tax on December 29, during the lull between Christmas and New Year’s Day, was clearly timed to cause maximum damage while an unsuspecting public celebrated the holidays. “The announcement by CompuServe and Unisys that users of the GIF image format must register by January 10 and pay a royalty or face lawsuits for their past usage, is the online communications community’s equivalent of the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor. wrote a protest letter after the announcement: Pat Clawson, President, and CEO of one TeleGrafix Communications Inc. This caused an outrage, GIFs were going to start costing money. In late 1994, it was announced that Unysis would license LZW compression to CompuServe for use in the GIF, in exchange for a fee. Battilana, The GIF Controversy: A Software Developer’s Perspective, 1995Īs Michael Battilana pointed out, although LZW compression was widely used and CompuServe used it for the GIF format in 1987, Unysis had already granted a patent on LZW compression. No one in the community at large had known.” Michael C. “After all the work and success, it turned out that suddenly there was a patent. Image: Enthusiasms, Dancing Baby (also known as Baby Cha-Cha), one of the first animated GIFs Patent Issues
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