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Comment by valarauca1 | Hacker News Reader

This is really cool. And I hate to be that guy, especially so early. But wouldn't it be easier on both networking and cpu to convert it to a webm?

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Absolutely! We actually made a webm version (that's the smallest size to date and the fastest to create), but just wanted to perfect GIF creation and get some captions on the system early before introducing webm.

Maybe we should reverse that?

It depends, who is your actual target audience? If it's a general anyone and everyone, gif is the way to go. If it's a more technical audience, who probably know what webm already is, then webm may make more sense

And from a more marketing side of things

If you went gif first and five months down the line announcing support for webm makes you look innovative and will probably get you posted to a handful of subreddits and the front page of hn.

If you went webm first and five months down the line announce gif support, you probably won't be able to achieve the same results.

Definitely. At first we wanted to target general audience and then transition into more technical.

It's a little conflicting because I love HN and reddit, so my* general preferences differ from what I think is actually the best transition :3

If you want to convert GIFs to WebM/MP4/etc you might want to check out the MediaCrush[1] code. Or just use https://mediacru.sh, which is and always will be free.

[1]: https://github.com/mediacrush/mediacrush

Thank you! Are you behind midacru.sh?

I am indeed. Happy to answer your questions.

Absolutely! May be able to work together. What's the best way to reach each other?

Another mediacrush guy here - jdiez went to sleep. Us devs hang out in #mediacrush on irc.freenode.net and we also read emails sent to {jdiez,drew}@mediacru.sh

I'd love to know your thoughts on using WebP (image format that supports animation) versus WebM (video format) for GIFs.

Do you think it's worthwhile? If not, why?

We haven't looked much into WebP as an animation container. And since it's only supported by Chrome (and will likely remain that way) we are not currently considering it. WebM and MP4 both have pretty good codecs for video; definitely a lot better than GIFs, that's for sure.

I love your work. Thank you for mediacrush. Are you guys doing alright, financially, if you don't mind me asking?

Thank you for using MediaCrush! We publish regular transparency reports[1] about several things, including our finances. We don't have any seed money, it's just coming out of our own wallet.

[1] https://blog.mediacru.sh/2014/07/12/State-of-MediaCrush-2014...

What is the most efficient way to donate to MediaCrush? Gittip? If so, is the weekly subscription easy to cancel?

If you'd like to set up a recurring donation, then yes, Gittip is the easiest way to do it. That said, we're not picky about donations; we'll accept pretty much every payment method or barter.

I definitely prefer gifs, so please dont remove that option.

never!!!

webm doesn't work on Safari or IE http://caniuse.com/webm

I just call those two SafarIE. Safari is shaping up to be the new IE so we might as well just say them in one phrase instead of always specifying them both.

Cant email a webm

How is attaching a gif any different than attaching a webm?

Some email clients support animated gifs embedded in the main email content. None that I currently use, but I do remember it as a feature in Outlook 2003.

Mail.app on OS X also does this

gifs will survive for ever!

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